open: "accidents" will happen.

[aberratic]

WHO: Ness Tavane (aberratic)
WHAT: An "accident" and an amputation
WHEN: Backdated-ish to mid-March
WHERE: The Gallows/Infirmary
NOTES: CW for amputation of a limb, illness from infection in said limb, confusion and disorientation as a result of fever. Lmk if you need any other cws and I'll add them!

It's early morning one balmy day in the middle of Drakonis, and the central tower of the Gallows is quiet. A few early risers have already made their ways to their offices, not to mention those who fell asleep in their offices—or those who never slept in the first place—but most of Riftwatch is still asleep, or at least milling about the dining hall. Coffee and tea are still brewing, breakfast is still being served, the work of the day is still at least an hour away for most.

This is purposeful; it means there's no one near the Quartermaster's office to see what happens. There is only silence, and then a sudden cacophonous crash to break it, and a high, sharp scream.

Comments

[ipseite]

Setting the folder down — temporarily out of Ness’s reach — Petrana busies herself with unfolding the metal contraption she’d carried in alongside it, producing something once secure that’s rather like a sturdier music stand, designed to hold not pages but books open in place. It will certainly more than serve for the sheaf of busy-work reports that are, admittedly, largely rather dull in their particulars,

“Familiarising yourself with these will not, I think, tax you so that anyone feels the need to scold for it,” she says, setting them up in the stand; she has already organised them by chronology (and priority, where appropriate). “But so as you might not feel quite so apart from what’s done in your absence, or lost when you return from it.”

A long-standing habit of her own, even if sometimes she’s asking Julius to read them to her so she can fall asleep.

[aberratic]

It's out of her reach, but that doesn't mean Ness won't at least try to see what the folder is all about—try, that is, until she gets distracted by something far more interesting, not to mention touching—

"Oh, this will be so useful!"

Ness reaches to run her fingers over the contraption, a little less coordinated with her left than her right (but less so than might be expected), noting now it unfolds, its beautifully simple mechanisms.

"Thank you, Madame," and you can tell she really means it because it takes her a few seconds to look away from the contraption in order to meet Petra's еyе. "Where did you find such a device? I must purchase one for myself."

Because surely this is merely a loaner, not a gift.

[ipseite]

In anticipation of the question, Petrana offers her as well the craftsman’s calling card, readily to hand —

no pun intended.

“Monsieur Walding is a bookseller by his primary trade,” she explains, sitting by Ennaris’s infirmary bed once she’s set up the stand near enough to be useful, “but he has expanded his vision somewhat— to read is his passion, I understand, and so he has solved many such problems for himself, and thought perhaps that his clientele would likewise appreciate his solutions.”

And if she can’t quite relate to his enthusiasm for the form itself, she has certainly benefited from his problem-solving.

“Often he will have one or two available, but in the event he does not, I believe one might only wait a week or two for one to be made.”

[aberratic]

How is it that there is a bookseller in this city she hasn't met yet, she must meet this man—

Ness visibly restrains herself from spending too much time poring over the card, imagining what this Monsieur Walding is like, pre-scripting the conversation and how to describe what she wants out of her book stand. She sets the card on her bedside table, close to hand but not her focus, at the moment.

"Thank you, Madame," she says, with all the depth of gratitude she can muster. If she'd managed to do as she'd intended from the start, go two years, even a year, into her time in Thedas before resorting to this, she'd have found these little solutions herself. She'd have made it a point to. In half a year she taught herself to write with her left hand, taught herself to tie her laces with one, to feed herself and dress herself and tend her own hair with one hand and no mirror—but there's so much to account for, so many gaps to fill in. Too much to think of on her own. Having help, without having to ask for it—it means so much.

But there's no call to get weepy about it. Madame de Cedoux isn't here for her to cry all over about the effects of this thing she did to herself. Ness smiles, soft and a little sardonic as she leans toward the folder to peruse the work in front of her.

"I was told before this that I need to rest, but somehow I imagine this is not what the Doctor intended."

[ipseite]

It is, perhaps, not an accident that Petrana had found this one already—

but whatever is percolating within her mind on that subject, she is not minded to weigh Ennaris down with it presently. She says, “Well, that is as may be,” pleasantly non-committal on the subject of Docteur Strange’s edicts, “but for as often as it is called blissful, I have never found ignorance a restful state of being.”

And surely, it is better to mitigate that as easily as reading a few reports than to burden a time of healing with distraction?

(It can come as little surprise to anyone that she has, herself, never made for an easy patient.)

“I can only imagine he intends what is best.” And what kind of heartless person might call this otherwise? Checkmate, medicine.