MOD PLOT ↠ WAKING AND SLUMBERING

[faderifting]

WHO: Everyone, give or take
WHAT: Nightmares, abominations, Satinalia, and sand.
WHEN: Firstfall 1, throughout the month
WHERE: The Silent Plains
NOTES: OOC post. Use content warnings in your subject lines as needed.

The fall of Starkhaven and death of Sebastian Vael rallied the Exalted March to push into Tevinter territory and, invigorated by vengeance, raze the border city of Trevis. Since then, the March has moved past Caiman Brea (which surrendered) before stalling out at the edge of the Silent Plains to the east of the captured cities. It's been bogged down partly by the usual combination of time, weariness, and politics—mostly some squabbling over Nevarran forces diverting to try to retake Perendale and whether the Orlesian forces will be heading after to try to free it themselves–but also by a plague of nightmares that's decimating morale and causing an alarming number of mages to erupt into demonic violence. (Not that many, but any number is alarming given the devastation an abomination can cause.) In an attempt to move safely out of range of escape attempts while they regroup and address these issues, the March has pushed east and made camp at a small oasis just within the edge of the desert, which shields them from approach but also presents its own challenges.

It's not a particularly pleasant region in which to be stalled. There's water, courtesy of the spindly tributary of the Minanter that Trevis, Caiman Brea, and Nessum all survive upon; there's low, scrubby plant life, stunted olive and palm trees and dry patchy grasses. And that's about it. Even this meager vegetation fades away rapidly into desert—first dark bedrock bared by incessant winds, just a thin layer of dusty sand whipped back and forth across it. The road is little more than a faint line of wear across the stone, but the ruins of a dwarven trade outpost spike up alongside it like dark fingers, and it's here that Riftwatch will meet its guides, a pair of Orlesian siblings from the Western Approach and their pack of camels.

The exchange of mounts may seem like overkill at first given how close the camp is, but the sand grows rapidly deeper as you go east, rising up suddenly into dunes tall enough to hide a dragon (more on that later). The camp isn't more than an hour or so into the desert but there is no road here, the Orlesians, or possibly the camels themselves, navigating by instinct and landmarks alone. One rides at the head of the train and the other at the back, chivvying stragglers and dragging a camel hair broom to assist the wind in wiping away their tracks. The sun is brutal, beating down on heads and backs as they ride east in the afternoon, its glare off the pale golden sands in their eyes, the haze of heat rising off them playing tricks on the mind. They may glimpse the false oasis of a mirage several times before the real thing abruptly appears: they ride over a dune like any other and there at its base is the camp, arrayed around a crescent-shaped pool edged with palms. They arrive at sunset, just in time to enjoy a half hour or so of pleasant breezes and brilliant skies before the sun drops behind the sands and the temperature plummets.

I. CAMP

There's no need for Riftwatch to make its own camp. The Exalted March has a cluster of empty tents waiting for them when they arrive. They're barracks-sized, made to house upwards of a dozen people, outfitted with rows of narrow cots and wooden floors made of planks lashed together with rope. Riftwatch is assigned three of them for sleeping and a fourth for setting up tables and work spaces, arranged like spokes around the hub of a large fire pit. Riftwatch is invited to share in whatever grey-brown slop comes out of the nearest enormous pot each night, but if anyone is enterprising enough to hunt or forage, they might come up with something to roast or stew on their own.

The tents' arrangement affords Riftwatch a very small amount of privacy, but they're otherwise in the middle of the Exalted March's expansive sea of tents, unable to exit in any direction without rubbing elbows with the soldiers. Mostly humans, though there are suface dwarves and city elves among them, the latter largely support staff, though a few have taken to fighting alongside the soldiers they serve over the last few years. All are at least culturally Andrastian, but they're otherwise fairly varied. Around a single fire you might find a zealous Nevarran who hopes to help vanquish Tevinter and bring the Chant to the dark souls of its wayward people, a Tantervalian who barely knows their Apotheosis from their Threnodies but is here for vengeance for their lost city and friends, a barely-adult Orlesian villager who signed on because it sounded more rewarding than mucking out stables, and a spitting mercenary who's only following the Chantry's money.

What they all have most in common, right now, is exhaustion–the kind that comes with frayed nerves, trouble thinking clearly, and an unusually high probability of starting to shout or cry over minor inconveniences. While the Free Marches dealt with nightmares for months without most people becoming so affected, on Riftwatch's first night in the camp, they'll find the nightmares are worse than what they ever experienced in the Gallows: vivid, specific, twisted, and difficult to shake when they wake up panicked in the middle of the night. Anyone who wanders out of the tent into the cold dark will find at least a few soldiers from nearby tents have done the same, stalking around like sleep-deprived undead or sitting and staring into the fires with vacant expressions.

In recent weeks, this steady stream of nightmares has had a predictable side-effect: a small outbreak of abominations among the mage army that had been accompanying the Exalted March, several with death tolls in the teens before they were killed or driven away by the Divine's loyal Templars. As a precaution, the mage army has since sent all mages too young to have been harrowed and any who were identified as vulnerable back to Orlais, with the rest residing instead to the west of the main camp rather than integrated within it. Templars camped along the rim of the main camp to provide a barrier should there be any further incidents.

Riftwatch's mages aren't subject to this division–a condition of their help–but they'll find the camp a less friendly environment than they may have grown used to in recent years, as many of the soldiers either survived a recent mage-borne horror or know at least one person who died in the outbreak and are understandably wary of having more mages in their midst, and strangers at that.

II. SATINALIA

Riftwatch's arrival comes the day before Satinalia. That it's neither the ideal setting nor the ideal mood for a celebration is apparent as soon as they set foot in the camp. But Captain Thevot Gaffey joins Riftwatch at their camp fire early on the first morning looking frayed and cold and glassy-eyed with exhaustion or perhaps just misery, and he drops some heavy hints that he and some of the other brass would be extremely grateful if Riftwatch contributed some of its better-rested energy to helping the soldiers have a nice evening, especially as the expected shipment of less gruel-y food has failed to materialize.

So consider this task number one: assisting the minority of Exalted Marchers who are straining to keep everyone else's spirits up in conjuring a good time out of nearly nothing. Organize games and dances, convince officers to give up bottles from their personal stashes, share whatever Riftwatch brought, or lean into the mood and try to lead a few soldiers into a more relaxing card game or fireside storytelling session. Anything to try to convince a bunch of cranky, overtired, frightened soldiers that things aren't really so bad at least for a few hours.

III. FIELD WORK

Of course the primary reason Riftwatch has been brought to the Silent Plains is to solve the problem of the nightmares. But there's a long list of other problems that the Exalted Marchers could use their help with while they're in the area, especially with their own forces so run-down at the moment.

While they stay in camp they'll be expected to pitch in with the mundane tasks that keep a camp running: helping tend the camels and other mounts, repairing equipment, re-staking tents, hauling water, tending to ill and injured and such, so long as it does not interfere with Riftwatch's primary assignment of resolving the nightmare issue. As soon as they've settled in, they'll all be assigned to assist with hunting parties and patrols, circling the perimeter to keep watch for any suspicious movement or dangerous wildlife. The camp has encountered the usual desert fauna: hyenas and quillbacks that prowl the river's edge, gurns and phoenixes among the sands. Each poses their dangers, but can provide needed supplies as well, and the March isn't in a position to be picky. Supply runs by camel or mule to the few near-ish settlements, either on the outskirts of the desert or other oases, are in much demand, but the journeys have to be discreet and round-about; as new faces, Riftwatch may be asked to help with these as well.

A few weeks ago, a party encountered a group of dragonlings and dispatched them, only to find scouts ambushed by a full-sized dragon the next day, bellowing fire and sprays of sand powerful enough to strip flesh. It has attacked several supply deliveries and hunting parties since, and there have been reports of sightings nearing the camp. Anyone venturing out into the dunes will be warned to be on their guard. Qualified members of Riftwatch may be recruited to travel along to help protect these groups and to help hunt the dragon down. There are plenty of smaller dragonlings with weaker sand-breathing powers prowling the area, and there may be more than one encounter with the dragon before it is killed.

Patrols and hunting parties will also be asked to keep a lookout for signs of elven surveillance, and, if Riftwatch is amenable, to make an effort to find the elves that have been watching the camp and make contact with them to discover their allegiances, which at first were presumed to be neutral until a supply caravan was attacked last week. (Anyone may be tasked with the search for the elves' encampment, but to make contact please sign up.)

While a few of the recent spate of abominations were killed in the camp, a small number escaped into the desert and need to be tracked down before they cause further harm. (If they can be. Abominations roaming the countryside for years without being caught is not an unheard of phenomenon, and the risk that they eventually make it to a village or trade caravan is too high to leave them to the whims of the desert.) Riftwatch is enlisted to join in the hunt, either in groups of their own or as part of larger parties of Exalted Marchers, mages, and Templars trying to follow the abominations' trail through the desert.

It's not an easy task, in a landscape where sand is quickly blown over most evidence of something passing through a given area. Finding them is so much more difficult than fighting them that even people who are not exactly equipped for combat against a powerful magic-wielding demonic being may be enlisted to help anyway if they have skills useful for tracking. With some aerial scouting from griffons, tips from passing travelers, and the discovery of a few small massacres where the abominations have run into merchants or scouting parties or wild animals and left scorched or bloody scenes in their wake, it will be possible to track some of them down in the desert–and then to take them down, as that's the only known cure.

Everyone traveling through the desert will also have to contend with the natural dangers of the environment: navigation is difficult and getting lost easy; water must be carefully rationed away from camp; and sandstorms may spring up with little warning, though most blow through in a matter of minutes. Most, but not all. Midway through their stay a storm rises on the horizon, large and dark enough to give them about an hour's warning before it arrives, just enough to batten down the hatches—if they're near any. The storm whips enough sand into the air to blot out the sun in mid-afternoon, flinging it about with blinding ferocity for the rest of the day and into the night, forcing the camp to take stock and dig out from some new drifts come morning.

IV. A COMPLICATION

Every mission or patrol that takes Riftwatch into the desert comes with an added problem: venture any further north than the main camp, and people begin to find that their nightmares aren't waiting for them to fall asleep anymore. After a mile, images and sounds begin bleeding into the world, at first distant blink-and-you-miss-it brief, just a mirage, maybe, then closer and lingering as parties move further afield. Though they're pulled from your nightmares, they aren't private hallucinations; whole groups see the same visions at once. A hoard of darkspawn crests a dune and rushes a party with weapons that pass through them harmlessly. Enormous spiders click their mandibles in the dark. People you hoped to never see again walk amongst the party for a mile or more at a time, looking solid and sounding real but leaving no footprints behind them.

The visions vanish on their own after a while, or sooner if silenced by a Templar or dispelled by a mage, and none of them can hurt anyone–not here, not yet. But they keep coming, and they keep growing stronger the further north anyone goes in search of rogue abominations or dinner, or, obviously, the source of the nightmares. Those traveling alongside members of the Exalted March, a good number of them superstitious and all of less used to this sort of nonsense, will have the added task of keeping them calm. At least the first time or two before they, too, get used to it.

Comments

[armd]

Yeah, getting looked at like that isn't great, but is marginally better than watching Clarisse haul herself back together, turning her head to present Abby with a stubbornly empty expression instead. It doesn't suit her face at all. Abby comes to sit by her in the sand.

"Don't care." So jot that down. 'I wanted to make sure you're okay' should be the next thing out of her mouth, but she doesn't want to Clarisse to force herself to act okay to get out of dealing with that. Abby kinda thinks that she would.

Instead, she decides she's gonna ask questions until Clarisse tells her to shut up.

"Was that Ares?"

She knows already, but. Baby steps.

[laruetheday]

Voice scratchy, Clarisse says, "Yeah." She knows Abby knows already. It was pretty obvious.

There's my girl.

Her skin crawling, Clarisse puts her head down again, resting her forehead on her arms. It's a weird way to feel. Sitting under the baking sun, but she feels like she could start shivering. Her eyes hurt like she might cry.

"I've been waiting for him to show up," she admits, in a low voice. "All this time." Since she got here. To Thedas. Ever since she fell through the rift.

[armd]

Abby doesn't think she's ever seen Clarisse not purposefully take up as much space as she can, never seen her hunch down and curl inward to be small and out of the way. Her expression creases with concern and she inches nearer to her, scooting her butt across the sand until their shoulders very gently touch each other.

"Yeah?" She doesn't say something like but that wasn't really him, because it doesn't matter right now. To Clarisse, that was real. She really saw him. The fear mattered.

"Well," she offers, nudging into Clarisse with her arm, "He showed up. Now you don't have to worry about it any more."

[laruetheday]

Abby's arm nudges against hers, and Clarisse lifts her head a little so she can glance over at her.

You don't get it, she wants to say. Yell, even though it's not Abby's fault that this is happening. But she doesn't understand where Clarisse's anxiety is stemming from. Sure, a fake, nightmare version of Ares showed up, and if that happens again she can deal with it. It doesn't erase the fear she has that her dad—her actual dad, a god, someone who can do and be anywhere he chooses anytime he wants—might still come around one day, just to fuck with her.

But of course Abby wouldn't get it. Clarisse has never told her.

"I fucking hate this," she mutters.

[armd]

"Yeah." She looks back. She can't figure out the expression on Clarisse's face at all and it's bothering her. "It fucking sucks."

The nightmares, the lack of anything good to eat, Satinalia pushing doggedly ahead despite all of this... the sand... And, honestly, as much as she wants to help by doing something (the only kind of helping she's good at), Abby wonders if she even can right now. Maybe all she can do is sit here with her until she feels a bit better—or get up right now and go find Ellie, bring her wordlessly back here to apply comfort, which she doesn't want to fucking do.

Does that make her an asshole? She has no idea.

[laruetheday]

Almost like Clarisse can tell what she's thinking, she presses her lips together until they go bloodless. Then, suddenly, she reaches out and puts a hand on Abby's arm, just above her elbow. She moves so quick that at first it might seem like she's about to shove her, punch her even, but she doesn't. She's pleading.

"Don't tell anybody."

She just needs to get her shit together. One decent night's sleep. That's all.

[armd]

Abby nearly moves her arm instinctively out of Clarisse's reach; what actually happens is a weird little flinch and then she leans into the touch immediately afterward, almost guiltily. Reflex, is all.

She says, "I won't."

Not if Clarisse doesn't want her to.

Abby would like to talk about it though, or at least have Clarisse confide in her about this, but it doesn't seem like it's going to happen. Maybe it will later, once she's calmed down and shaken off Ares' phantom grin. Or maybe 'don't tell anybody' is a missive for them both, regarding all of this, and Abby will keep it to herself, let it sit uncomfortably until she's mostly forgotten about it. Blood magic.

"Promise."

[laruetheday]

The weird little flinch doesn't escape Clarisse's notice, and though she should have expected some kind of reaction like that, it still makes her feel like shit.

There's my girl. Gods, she wants to puke.

"Okay. Thanks." She takes her hand back, and then it's the same awkward silence again, the two of them sitting next to each other in the sand and not talking about any of it.

She thinks back to the time she and Abby talked after everyone got back from the temple where they'd seen each other's memories. How Clarisse had told Abby that she felt like she didn't know anything about her, and let her talk about her dead dad and her dead friends, and then kept on not saying shit about herself in return.

"Do you remember when you told me you used to have a lot of your dad's stuff?" she asks finally. "Like... a mug, and his coins, and pictures of the two of you." It's stupid—she never even knew Abby's dad, but she still committed all that stuff to memory after Abby talked about it. She was jealous.

"I never had anything like that. The only thing my dad ever gave me was my spear, but I had to earn it first. I didn't even know he was my father until I was almost twelve. I was... embarrassed, and I wanted you to think I was more important than that." She looks embarrassed now, her cheeks flushed red, her head bent, not looking at Abby.

[armd]

She's actually surprised by Clarisse speaking up—having assumed they'd probably sit like this for a while in silence before getting up and moving on, pretending none of it happened—let alone by what she's actually saying. She does remember that. She didn't realise Clarisse would.

"I do think you're important," she says slowly, brow furrowed as she thinks. She's looking at her hands instead of at Clarisse, but they're still sitting close. She's picking at a bit of skin on her finger. "Because you're my friend, and I care about you. You're cool. That doesn't change because of how your dad treats you."

She knows that Clarisse is a very proud person, that the image she projects means a lot to her, so it could be insulting to tell her this, that it doesn't matter to Abby. But it never has, so she doesn't know how to pretend otherwise.

"And... dads are supposed to give you stuff like mugs and coins and stupid pictures of you when you were a baby. They're not supposed to make you work for that, that's messed up. He's the one with the issue."

[laruetheday]

I do think you're important. You're my friend, and I care about you.

Clarisse realizes, to her horror, that if she says anything there's a 70/30 chance she's going to start crying. She swallows repeatedly around what feels like a jagged rock caught in her throat instead, the muscles in her neck and shoulders going so tense they ache.

It hurts, thinking about all the things she wanted from her dad and never got. Not even stuff, just... time. Respect. She thinks it will always feel like this, probably. But at the same time, it's nice to hear someone else say out loud that she isn't wrong for wanting them. That your dad is supposed to give a shit about you, and not hold things over your head like a threat. Sometimes she needs to be reminded.

"Guess no one ever told him that," she manages finally, and traces her index finger in the sand at her side. Abby isn't really looking at her, and Clarisse wonders what she's thinking.

"If you have... anything you want to know, you can ask me." At this point, what the fuck does it matter, it can't get any more humiliating than knowing Abby watched her run away from a hallucination.

[armd]

"That fucking sucks."

What else is there to say? Clarisse was just a kid; in some ways she is still just a kid. It sounds like nobody was looking out for her, let alone telling her dad to pull his head out. Copying her, Abby sinks her hand into the desert, fingers splayed to let the sand trickle through the gaps when she pulls it free again. It's hot and nearly burns.

Thinking of something private and personal Lev said to her once, she responses in a similar vein. "D'you want me to know anything else?"

[laruetheday]

Clarisse turns to glance at Abby, frowning over the question. It sounds like something a therapist would say, from her (admittedly very limited) understanding of what therapy is like.

After a few seconds, she reaches up to scratch the back of her neck, just to have something new to do with her hand.

"I don't know," she says. "I guess... it's not all bad. He's been proud of me before. One time he let me drive his war chariot, even though he almost never lets his daughters do it. One time he called me the greatest warrior he'd ever seen." She blows the air out of her lungs in a sigh that hisses out between her teeth.

"But if he ever came here for real, like through a rift, he'd be very unhappy about what I'm doing here. And he'd make me a worse person. And... I worry about that all the time."

[armd]

Yeah, well. This is the closest to actual therapy Clarisse la Rue is ever gonna get. Take notes.

"He'd be unhappy," Abby theorises, "that what you're doing here is totally separate from what he had you doing back home. He can't touch this. And he won't."

Clarisse can make whatever she wants of Riftwatch (within reason, obviously). It's hers.

Maybe this is blunt, but she's thought about this before and it may help Clarisse now. "He's not gonna come through a rift. Have you noticed that everybody who does wants to help with the war? Not a single rifter has come through and been like fuck this, I'm out. I get that we don't exactly have any choice, but we don't have to want it. And everybody here does.

"He wouldn't." She doesn't know him like Clarisse does, but Abby doesn't think she needs to. Ares, the god of war, helping to stop it? Yeah right. "The rifts won't bring him through. You're safe here."

[laruetheday]

While Abby talks, Clarisse looks at her, watching silently as if Abby is some kind of authority on the subject. She really, really wants her to be. It would be nice not to lie awake anxious over this anymore, to be able to shrug and think, Well, Abby said he wouldn't, so...

"I didn't want to help when I first got here," she says finally, but there's nothing behind it. Clarisse's resistance had only lasted a few weeks. It barely counted.

"I guess you're right." Yeah, she thinks Abby's theory isn't a bad one. It's not foolproof but it's better than anything Clarisse had to hold onto a minute ago. She bites her bottom lip, sucking it into her mouth for a moment before she says anything else.

"Sometimes I worry it's too late, even if I never see him again. That I'm already... like him. Know what I mean?" She wipes her sweaty palms on her pants, trying to get some of the sand off. "Back in Seattle I—there was this guy—" Abruptly, she shuts her mouth, not sure how to say it. She's never talked about it since it happened.

[armd]

"I'm right," she insists, trying to crack a little joke. "And I've been here longer than you, so you have to listen to me."

But Clarisse isn't smiling. She's biting her lip, thinking hard. She gets this furrow between her eyebrows when she's really ruminating on something, Abby knows it really well. It's a bright, warm spot of familiarity in the midst of all this... fucking sand.

She doesn't have anything to say to that, just nods mutely. She does know what Clarisse means but it's complicated to try and explain why. And she doesn't want to either, so it's both a relief when Clarisse speaks up and foreboding at the same time, cuz of what she says. For a moment, Abby thinks she's referencing something that happened to her back home, before she came here. And then she remembers Seattle. Ellie pushing her out of the way of a bite. Barely sleeping because she was so fucking worried Benedict or whomever the fuck might split off from their group at any moment and get jumped by a clicker.

Abby breathes out. "What guy?"

cw references to torture

[laruetheday]

"Ellie and I went to this gas station to get supplies, and we ran into a WLF patrol. It was..." Fine, she wants to say, and doesn't. Whatever. They handled it, it was okay, except—

"There was this guy I shot, but he didn't die. He was begging me to stop and trying to crawl away from me, and I... I thought about letting him go but then I thought, he'd hate it if you did that. My dad. So I started fucking with the guy instead. I kicked him in the face and then I stood on his bullet wound and leaned all my weight on it. And I would've kept going, you know? I got all caught up in it. It felt... justified. And good." The last few words are quieter, tinged with shame.

"But then we had to leave in a hurry so I just shot him again and we took their stuff and went back to camp, and. I don't know."

Well, except she does know. Ellie'd hugged her and tried to talk to her and Clarisse had basically told her to fuck off, and then Clarisse had gone and sat right next to Abby on purpose, using her like some kind of emotional human shield. And later she and Ellie had talked about it, a little, but not really. Not about how she'd felt like she'd had to do it, and not about how she'd liked doing it.

It only occurs to her after saying all this that Abby might have known the guy she tortured. She wonders if Abby's thinking about it too, and she watches her, looking for disgust or anger in her expression. She's not gonna blame Abby for it, but it is making her feel kind of nauseous that she just said all that out loud to someone.

cw references to torture & murder

[armd]

Abby nods slowly. This is nothing she hasn't felt before. And yeah, she might have known that guy, but honestly? She probably didn't, because she didn't bother committing many of the WLF to memory in the first place. She wasn't there for them. Maybe it makes her an asshole, sitting here, feeling nothing at what Clarisse is saying other than an overwhelming sense of familiarity.

"I know." She clears her throat. "I mean — I've done that too." To the Scars, sure. With Joel. What didn't she do to Joel? Her voice lowers, soft and low in the back of her throat. "It does feel good. Especially when they were gonna kill you. Or fuck you up, or hurt your friends and you're the one who stops them."

Her brow furrows. "I'm not trying to say it's okay, I know it's fucked up." Obviously it's fucked up. She thinks of Lev asking her ‘have you tortured people before?’ and that he let her get away with not answering, cuz he already knew what she'd say.

She laughs, an awkward, forced sound. She hasn't got anything helpful to say and it would be a fucking double-standard to comfort or condemn. "Sorry."

[laruetheday]

Clarisse watches as Abby struggles and forces herself to talk through it. It isn't like she has anything all that monumental to say, either. It's all stuff that Clarisse would've guessed she'd say.

But somehow hearing it in Abby's low, calm voice makes it feel... almost okay, for the first time. That, yeah, it's fucked up for something like that to feel good. But that it makes sense, too. Both can be true.

After all the shit with her dad, and then this, there's a sudden, sweeping comfort in hearing someone say I know, and keep sitting with her anyway.

Abby's laugh is awkward and strained, uncomfortable. She's clearly out of words. But Clarisse laughs too and it's genuine. A little shaky, a little bit out of control. Once she starts she almost can't stop, and she's still grinning as she gives Abby a soft punch on the shoulder, all shaky and loose-limbed with relief.

"Don't be sorry."

It occurs to her suddenly that she's never said this out loud, not even after they woke up from being fucking dead and Clarisse needed to sit with her head on Abby's shoulder to remind herself that Abby was still there, so she says it now: "You're my best friend, Abby."

[armd]

Abby cracks a tiny smile when Clarisse starts laughing, and she goes, "Hey," half-heartedly, like she's offended that Clarisse is laughing, but really she's just relieved. It's nice to see her smile after all that, even if she's just breaking the awkward tension. Even if they're laughing together about how good it can sometimes feel to fucking kill people.

Yeah it's messed up, but they're messed up. It's kinda nice to just acknowledge that and let it be true with no other input.

She shakes her head, grinning at the sand now, and when Clarisse punches her arm she flexes the muscle and knocks her knee into Clarisse's leg, hard. Says it back, so quick and easy (it's been like this for ages now, just nobody's said it out loud, classic), "You're my best friend too."

Because she can't let this moment be too sincere she adds, "Even though you've got sand in your pants," and flings a handful of sand at her pants.

[laruetheday]

Yeah, she's for sure going to have sand down her pants now, but she's still smiling.

She's been covered in sand most of the time they've been here, anyway—scratching her head and feeling little grains of it getting trapped under her fingernails, climbing out of her bedroll in the mornings and blinking it out of her eyes. A little more isn't going to kill her.

"Dick." Clarisse swats some sand in Abby's direction, not really aiming, but they're close enough for that not to matter.