faderift | this world of ours is not as it seems

WHO: River and OPEN
WHAT: Spooky little girl wandering around Skyhold.
WHEN: Late Wintermarch.
WHERE: Various locations around Skyhold.
NOTES: n/a

River has good days, and she has bad days. At times it feels like the swing of a pendulum, whose motions she can never truly calculate.

The good days have gotten progressively better. There are points of focus, people to talk to, to connect with. The Fade remains a presence, near-engulfing even when she's awake, but there's an opportunity to see past it, or perhaps more accurately to watch it layer against the people on this side of the Veil. Cole's compassion. Nerva's protectiveness. Zevran's cleverness. She thrives in their contact, stretching out without fear of it harming either Simon or herself, and simply allowed to be. It's a novel concept. She flits about the keep, often barefoot and the edges of her dress a little dirtier than they ought to be, her dark hair streaming behind her.

It's odd to think she has friends, yet it seems so. She feels their overlap and it feels like comfort, like warmth, and she doesn't want to untangle herself just yet.

But there are bad days.

She's more like a feral cat on those days, slinking just out of sight, out of reach. Either the noise has grown too loud inside her own head, or Simon's attempts to negate the worst of it leave her sluggish and more than a little bitter. Stumbling around like a child, slowed and lethargic. Those days she's not much good for anyone, though she tries to find those warm touchstones again. She lingers in the kitchens, in the hall, in the library or tavern, trying in vain to feel the vividness of those familiar voices again, blossoming bright like colors in her mind's eye.

She's little more than a shadow then. Huddled, hair in her face, staring outward blankly and through most passersby.

There are more good days than bad, thankfully. But every time she sinks brings doubt, creeping and gnawing. If she can't prevent herself from slipping, what happens if she falls?

Or is simply it a matter of when?

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He looked over at her, then at the butterfly, and he spoke with an honesty he rarely shared with anyone. Still, he had the strangest feeling that River of all people, would understand and not judge.

"Yes the cold would kill anyone out there. She's not the only one who is safe within these walls." He looks down at the courtyard, keeping his voice quiet, "Sometimes I wonder if everything we have fought for is already dead, and all I am trying to do is stay in the cocoon. Refusing to come out into this ... strange new world."

"They have to come out."

River peers up at him now, though not moving from her current position near the butterfly, her knees tucked up under her where she's crouched.

"They die if they don't. And they'll never know what they could have become."

He looks down at her then, the factual meaning and the symbolic one striking a chord in him. He knelt down next to her, his expression serious as it stayed on the butterfly.

"But what do you do, if you spend your entire time defending your right to come out of the cocoon at all? What if other ... kinds of butterflies deny that you can ever change, ever become something else?"

Frustration and a little bit of anger came across his expression then. "Is it worth it, in the end, just to see if you're beautiful or ... a monster?"

"Nobody chooses what they become. You just choose what to do with it."

If that were true, who would decide to be a mage, or an elf? Who would decide to be seen as different, to come out of that cocoon and be more when others would fear or deride them? But he's a human, a man, a templar. He knows little of what that means, and it's good enough that he thinks to ask those questions at all.

Her eyes flicker back to the butterfly, as it departs for the gardens some distance away, over rooftops. For a moment she seems ready to follow, climbing up onto the edge of the battlements and carefully balancing there.

He pressed his lips together, considering it her words. He had a choice now - as did all his people. A choice to move forward, or cling to the old ways. He couldn't ... wouldn't stay behind when there was so many people who were looking at him and Alayre to show a new way.

Even if it meant he was going to have to face the anger of some, on either side of the Templar and Mage fences. So many had fought to move forward with their lives, either outside the Inquisition or as Templars. Could he do no less?

He looked back to her, before he let out a strangled noise, then put his hands up, "River - would you please back away from the edge?"

But she showed no signs of swaying, nor of backing away. The gaps between the stone were easily navigated as she walked, one foot in front of the other, following the drifting insect with curious eyes. If it went too high, it risked being found by the ravens.

A sharp wind had her skirts gusting about her calves, but she remained in place. Somehow.

He watched her, hands going out to grab her back if she fell from the edge, but ... she seemed to stand perfectly still, without wavering at all. Reaching out to the sky, without a nary drop in balance.

He felt his hands fall down to his sides, as he looked at her with open wonder. How did she manage that? Fearless, in every regard? Did she simply have that much faith that she would not?

Allegories, again. But he did move closer to the edge himself.

The birds. There was something in that, something that scratched at the back of her mind. But it was gone again, and then the butterfly was wafting off towards the courtyard, leaving her to watch it drift away from her precarious perch.

"...we can't be afraid of what we become. Can't be afraid of falling, or we will."

Her fingers closed into her palm, pressing against her own chest gently before glancing back towards the templar, hovering so close. Ready in case she did.

"Nerva told me that if I fell, I might hurt someone."

He leaned against the stone, looking down, then up at her again. She was very wise, for a mad little one. Perhaps that was the way of things - how she knew to get by. The world was clearer through the bottom of a distorted glass, when the world was already distorted.

"So we must be brave where we stand, whereever that might be. Even right next to the edge."

He paused, then said simply, "In more ways than one."

"They overlap. Sometimes it's exactly what you think."

She stares at Norrington a moment before huffing, her breath catching in a few loose strands of hair hanging into her face from the last gust of wind.

"You want me to get down, too."

"Sometimes. Sometimes it is not."

He gave her a wry look, before he looked down.

"Well I would feel more comfortable ... but it is really up to you whether or not you want to make us all feel better."

this world of ours is not as it seems

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