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

[altusimperius]

It is a bit weird. But then, so is what he does. He can make people have nightmares while fully awake, can paralyze them in place with invisible restraints.

He thinks on it a moment, and then, with just the barest glance to Nina, he nods once. He doesn't want to admit aloud that he's this weak, but with the offer on the table, he'd be stupid not to accept it.

[prelest]

She nods in return and scoots up to sit next to him. Then she puts a hand gently on his back, and rubs gently; as she does, she attunes herself to his breath, and his heartbeat, and the chemicals racing through his brain that trigger fear.

Slowing his heart and breathing is easy enough. The chemicals are a little trickier: triggering the release of adrenaline to help someone keep fighting is one thing, but figuring out the balance that can help someone keep calm is complex. But when the breathing steadies, and the heartrate, the chemicals ebb with it, bringing a measure of ease and quiet.

"How's that?" she asks.

[altusimperius]

It's like smoking, he wants to say, but has to admit it's much faster-acting and doesn't include the haze over his thoughts and vision. It's stranger still to be touched like this by a woman who... isn't Micaela, which is a somewhat shameful realization, but the magic pulsating through him prevents him from dwelling on it for too long.

He nods, suddenly feeling as though he could-- and wants to-- fall asleep right here, on the stone floor.

[prelest]

She watches as he nods, searching his expression. With some of the anxiety gone, it's clear enough that he's exhausted. Looks fit to drop, really.

"Is your ritual finished?" she asks. She doesn't want to cut it short, but it's probably important to usher him off to bed before he swoons.

[altusimperius]

Nodding again, Benedict moves to stand, a little worried he won't actually make it down the stairs to his bed. If he were in the other tower the hookah room would make do, but that's an awful lot of stairs for his current state.

"Thank you," he mumbles, beginning to shuffle toward the stairwell. He'll make it.

[prelest]

"All right," she says, catching him by the arm, "you're not walking off on your own. You're going to end up slithering down the stairs like a wet noodle. And bashing your noodle against some stones while you're at it. Here." She loops her arm through his. "Lean on me."

[altusimperius]

He'd protest, he hates to be manhandled (in a nonsexy way and by women, at least), but Benedict is too tired to do much other than relent to Nina's gentle insistence. It's not such a bad thing, not always.