[open & closed] and when that day comes

[thereneverwas]

WHO: Barrow & friends
WHAT: ye olde lyrium detox in its various stages
WHEN: vaguely Wintermarch
WHERE: the infirmary
NOTES: I'll be adding a few starters at a time since I want later developments to feel organic and make sense. please feel free to request something if you don't see it here!

Comments

[armd]

"... I'd say congratulations but," Abby jokes, trailing off as Prudence gazes out toward the courtyard. She looks like Barrow in lots of little ways, their relationship is very obvious. When Prudence turns back she catches her looking and Abby's gaze drops to her own hands.

The people who live outside of these walls really have no idea what goes on inside them. It's not like Abby forgets about this — it's hard to, in Kirkwall, when she goes outside and people stare at her — but she's never really considered it from the point of view of an outsider before, not until Prudence. She says, "Do you... have any questions, or anything?"

[thereneverwas]

Prudence blinks, eyes widening in mild surprise-- but after a pause, she nods, redirecting her gaze to Abby's shard.

"Is it... painful?"

[armd]

"What," Abby says, doing a double-take at her hand because she assumed Prudence was referencing some other bruise she hadn't noticed, "This?"

The shard? "No. It — if we get too far away from other people with shards it starts to hurt. But not here."

[thereneverwas]

Prudence nods, looking abashed in the face of Abby's surprise-- is it a faux pas to wonder? But she relaxes some when the answer comes honestly.

"How strange," she remarks, "and that's why there are so many of you here." One can almost see the pieces coming together in her mind.

"I saw the rifts over Crestwood before they were closed. There was..." She pauses, in the way of one uncertain of whether to proceed, but powers through: "...there was one under the lake."

[armd]

Abby nods. It makes it sound terrible — and maybe it is, in a way, that they all more or less have to stay exactly where they are unless they venture out together. To certain people it would sound awful but there's safety in numbers. They are at war.

"Oh, shit. Which lake?"

They should look into it. Fix that.

(Would they have to go underwater?)

[thereneverwas]

“Crestwood,” Prudence says, with a weak little twitch of a smile—- same as the town that resides upon it. “It was… some years ago. The Inquisition* drained it to close the rift.”

She looks away, breathes a small sigh as she rubs a hand up and down one of her arms.
“There were… bodies had come back. The dead. Wandering, attacking anyone who got too near.”

Not that Abby would know anything about that.

*ok it might’ve been Riftwatch by that point I don’t remember