faderift | Our aspirations are wrapped up in books

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Our aspirations are wrapped up in books

WHO: Hermione Granger and Open!
WHAT: There's a new ~~witch~~ mage wandering around Skyhold. Come say hello?
WHEN: Backdated to her arrival near the end of Guardian and onward throughout Drakonis.
WHERE: ~~The library.~~ All over Skyhold. ~~But mostly its library.~~
NOTES: Feel free to run into her pretty much anywhere, or have her run into you. And be prepared for all the questions about your character and Thedas/their homeworld and everything in between.

If not for the fact that Hermione had spent so many of her formative years in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Skyhold might have been overwhelming

As it was, the sprawling fortress was a little hard to get used to, since the academic environment that had given Hogwarts some sense of structure amidst the chaos wasn't present here. There was a library, thankfully, and she spent much of her time there, though it was so small that she was certain she'd end up reading every book in there in two weeks' time if she didn't actually go out and explore the rest of her surroundings.

And so every so often, she pried herself away from the cold little corner she'd set aside for herself and wander the rest of the area, though granted, she more often than not was carrying at least one book with her. Usually it was one of the books that had survived the trip through the Fade; anyone who might spot her in the garden or tavern or a safe distance away from the sparring going on in the training grounds might notice her engrossed in such unfamiliar titles as Hogwarts, A History or occasionally digging through Spellman's Syllabary in the vain hope of finding recognizable runes on various inscriptions throughout Skyhold.

After all, just because she was endlessly fascinated by all the new people and cultures and history and magic, it didn't mean she didn't occasionally need a bittersweet reminder of home. Especially when her other major reminder was her wand, which - despite the fact that she'd taken to finding the most solitary places she could find and practicing with it harder than she ever had the night before an exam - still wasn't behaving properly at all. Apologies to those of you who end up slipping on some wayward ice or getting sprayed with pebbles from a spell gone wrong.

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Ariadne had found the absolute, perfect tree branch. It was high enough off the ground to feel safe, but low enough that she wasn't quite hidden by the leaves of higher branches. It rose at just such an angle that she could tuck herself into the nook where branch met trunk and feel stable, but it wasn't so high that she was uncomfortable straddling it.

It was such a little thing to find. But somehow, it made Ariadne more comfortable than she'd been in months. If she just squeezed her eyes shut the right way, she could almost fool herself into thinking that she was back in the forests of Deleo.

Funny. She'd never really been all that homesick for the forest before. Not while she was living in Valeria, a place full of bustling and energy and life. It was only now, when the possibility of ever going back to her childhood home seemed so remote, that she found that she missed it.

The branch would have to be a good-enough substitute.

And for the moment, it was. She was stretched out and content, absently playing a few notes on her pipes when an unfamiliar scent caught her attention.

Someone new? How exciting!

Hermione had started out looking for some place with no people or animals around, since her magic was beginning to be more of a nuisance than anything else. People kept getting hurt, or at the very least annoyed, and she really didn't want to end up wearing out her welcome when she had no place else to go at the moment.

But despite her search for solitude, she couldn't help but realize that she was walking towards the vague sound of music, and she eventually looked up, catching sight of someone in a tree. For a moment, it seemed like the sort of mad thing Luna Lovegood might do, but then she realized that no, Luna wasn't here, and that girl up there looked nothing like Luna, and it probably wasn't very polite to stare.

At least, it wouldn't be polite to stare without saying something, so she offers a smile before moving to continue on her way. "That doesn't look particularly comfortable."

Ariadne glanced down at her position curiously. Humans were always so strange when it came to comfort. Of course, it had taken her forever to get used to sleeping in a bed, but now she quite enjoyed it.

Matter of taste.

With a shrug, she hooked her right knee around the crook of the branch and threw her weight forward, flipping so that she was hanging upside down by her knee. The long rope of hair over her shoulder, pulled into a neat braid, coiled on the ground beneath her.

She offered the stranger an impish smile.

"Does this look better?"

She'd been about to walk under the branch, only to stop in surprise when the woman was suddenly hanging upside in front of her. Blinking, she let out a short, uncertain laugh despite herself, mentioning, "It looks like you might earn yourself a head injury if you aren't careful."

Though she doubted that she'd need to help getting down or even wanted to get down to begin with, Hermione offers her hand, in the event that she needed it to safely get on her feet. "There are enough ways to get hurt around here without inviting trouble."

Said the witch who was best friends with two wizards who shared Trouble as a middle name.

Ariadne laughed a light, bell-like laugh. "Sort of makes my previous position look more comfortable by comparison?" she teased.

But she didn't want to make the girl feel uncomfortable. So Ariadne reached up and grabbed the branch in both hands, shifting her weight so that she could uncurl her leg and hang down, before dropping softly to her feet.

She offered the stranger a curtsy. It was more of a bounce, really. But everything Ariadne did was a bounce. "I'm sorry, my lady," she said. "I was only joking."

"Less dangerous, maybe, but not any more comfortable. Trees aren't comfortable by nature."

Hermione herself didn't feel particularly uncomfortable. just a little puzzled by why anyone would choose to lounge against a tree of all things. She's had splinters before, and they weren't pleasant.

The strange little bounce and the way this woman regarded her gave Hermione pause, but not to the point where she felt the need to go on the defensive or anything like that. Heaven knows it didn't exactly feel as though she was being threatened or anything.

"There's nothing to apologize for. If you were comfortable, you're entitled to feel comfortable however you choose, so long as you're not hurting anyone. I don't think the tree particularly minded."

"Well, I would hope not," she said, looking up at the tree. A quizzical expression passed over her face, gray eyes narrowing slightly. "Wouldn't that be something? A living tree? Where I come from, there are some bushes that are alive. But they mostly just spit. Not the trees, though. They're just green and pretty. Like this one."

She brushed her palm against the trunk, like she was petting it.

The thought was dismissed as quickly as it came.

Ariadne turned back to smile at the other girl. "I haven't seen you around here before. You must be new to Skyhold."

"Spitting bushes?" Hermione asked, perplexed. She didn't sound incredulous, though, since she remarked, "We have one tree that has a mind of its own, but we've learned to stay far away from it. It doesn't really let people get too close, anyway."

As though that comment about the Whomping Willow didn't answer her question, Hermione smiled and offered the girl her hand to shake. "I only just got here. I'm Hermione Granger. Are you native to this world, or...?" At that, she looked down towards the girl's left hand, obviously looking for a shard that matched her own.

Ariadne reached out to clasp Hermione's wrist, giving her entire arm a vigorous shake. "Well met, Lady Hermione," she said. And to satisfy her curiosity, Ariadne held up her left hand, showing off the shard embedded there.

It was a curious thing, that shard. Whereas before, Ariadne's skin had been green from head to toe, now it was only still grin around the shard. The thing that labeled her as different.

She still couldn't quite get used to it.

"You must tell me more of this tree of yours," she said. "It sounds very, very curious."

Oh. If she started talking about nargles, then this girl would definitely have been cut from the same cloth as Luna. A few years ago, Hermione might have considered that a bad thing, but at least now she was a little more used to... eccentric behavior, and so she only continued to give her a small, indulgent smile.

"The Whomping Willow? That's really all there is to it. It's a magical plant that lashes out with its branches; someone once told me that the one on our school grounds got to be old enough to be cranky, and that's why it swats children away. I don't think that's true, though; it just wants to be left alone, which is respectable enough."

"So it's not really alive?" she asked uncertainly. "It only reacts to its environment, the way that a fly trap catches flies on instinct?"

She sounded no less fascinated, although perhaps a tad disappointed.

Ariadne loved plants. In another life, she thought, she would have been happy to serve as Princess Amanda's royal gardener. But, alas, that life was not to be. She was a soldier and a spy and that was what was necessary.

Flowers were a luxury.

"Technically, all plants are living things," Hermione responded with a shrug. "This one is just part of a magical species that happens to be a bit antisocial. Whether or not it's sentient, I don't know that anyone can really say. That's the trouble with living things that both can't speak and that are rooted to the spot, I suppose."

At least with animals, they could usually verbalize their pleasure or displeasure, and their body language often made it quite clear how they felt about a particular person or situation.

Ariadne realized her mistake and immediately felt guilty. Precision of language occasionally eluded her, in spite of--or perhaps because of--how many languages she spoke.

"Yes," she said, "of course."

Awkwardly, she turned to look at her tree. "But I don't think this one minds me much."

"Well, it isn't batting you away, so I'd say you're probably safe for at least a little bit."

Because really, being swatted by a tree that didn't want you near it was not fun, and she could say as much from personal experience. She'll gladly take the immobile ones over the ones who could act in what they likely felt was self-defense.

"Still, I would think it would be more comfortable on the ground. At the very least, you wouldn't exactly have to worry about falling if you shifted a bit to one side or the other."

"Oh, but I never fall."

She didn't say it to boast. It was just a simple matter of fact. The only time she'd ever fallen out of a tree was when she fell through the rift into Thedas. And really, that didn't count. The rift had swallowed her up and dropped her into the snow. She'd fallen from the rift, not the tree.

Ariadne smiled shyly. "I've been climbing trees since I was very small. I grew up in a forest."

Hermione looked a bit skeptical about the idea that she never fell, but she was tactful enough not to say anything. It could be true - some people were simply much more agile than she was, after all - so why say anything untoward about something that wasn't overly important?

"Oh? I'm assuming not a forest near here. What was it like?"

"No," Ariadne said gently, "not a forest near here."

Briefly, she flashed her shard at Hermione, before tucking her hands behind her back self-consciously.

"And it was beautiful," she continued, leaning back against the trunk of the tree like some kind of dreamy wood nymph. "Not like city forests, with patches of sky between the trees. The canopy was so thick that everything was always green." Including her skin, although that had nothing to do with the light. "And it was much warmer than here. So warm we never had to wear boots." Ariadne did not like boots.

She made a vague gesture with her chin, up to the branches above her. "The trees were sturdier there. Less brittle. They bent. They accepted change."

Hermione wouldn't have assumed she hadn't grown up around here if she hadn't noticed the shard earlier. For her own part, she was learning to walk around with her left hand in her pocket more often than not.

"It sounds nice," she mentioned with a little smile. "I spent a lot of time in forests last year - not like what you described, but probably closer to what you'd call city forests. If the circumstances had been better, I might have enjoyed it a bit more." Probably not, but at least she didn't say that she'd be happy to never see another forest for as long as she lived.

"How long have you been in Skyhold?"

Ariadne smiled dreamily. Just, it had been nice. Fleeting, of course. But that was the way of beautiful things, sometimes.

"A few months," she said, when the smile too faded. "I was part of the first wave of Rifters to arrive in Thedas."

A pause. "That's what we've started calling ourselves now. Rifters. I rather like the sound of it, don't you?"

Frowning just a little, Hermione asked, "This has been going on for a few months? And they haven't figured out how to stop it?" She could understand it taking some time to figure out how to send them back, but she would have thought that, with all of the supposed experts on the Fade out there, they would have at least learned how to close up the rifts by now.

"I've heard us called a great many things. Rifters, shardbearers, foreigners. I'm apparently a mage and garner peculiar looks if I try to insist I'm a witch. It doesn't much matter what we're called, though; I'd just like it if we can figure out how to prevent many more of us from coming in, since my arrival hadn't exactly been a pleasant experience."

She nodded eagerly. "Many of the Rifters feel the same way. Marcel Gerard's been trying to organize our efforts a little bit. Both to figure out what's happened and how to stop it and to keep ourselves from being swept up in the politics of what's going on in Thedas."

Ariadne admired Marcel. He was charismatic and determined to get things done. And he was also a mystery. While he looked Human enough, there was a peculiar scent to him. She couldn't quite figure it out.

And there was something delightful about that.

"I'd say he's the closest thing we have to a leader," she added.

Hermione shifted a little on her feet. It was a bit late for her to not be swept up in the politics of Thedas. "Politics don't have to be so bad, if they can influence positive change." At least, that was what she kept telling herself, or else her inadvertent fumbling through so many different policies would all seem pointless.

That last bit made her look at her a bit oddly. "Leader? Doesn't citing a leader among us sort of turn us into an organized group? That doesn't really help to keep us out of politics, considering how chaotic everything is right now."

"It's not official or anything like that," Ariadne replied, shrugging up one shoulder. "He's just been trying to organize meetings. So we can share our experiences and information. Some of the natives aren't very forthcoming. And it's complicated, trying to keep track of everything."

She had no doubt, however, that Marcel would be all-too-happy to accept an 'official' title of sorts. As much as she liked him, she knew he was the type of person eager for power.

Which wasn't bad either. Like politics, he could be an influence for positive change.

She had hope.

"All of the natives I've met have been fairly open," Hermione replied. But then, she'd mostly met mages, who always seemed willing to open up to another mage, especially about the various injustices she'd been facing. Perhaps she should make an effort to branch out, even if she obviously couldn't tell someone was a mage just by looking at them.

"Perhaps, more than a leader, rifters could make do with a scribe. It would undoubtedly be helpful to have core information about this world and the people in it gathered in one central place in an unbiased manner, especially if more rifters keep coming in."

"Oh, I think that's a very good idea," Ariadne said, nodding enthusiastically. "And we need to keep track of how we get here. It'll make it easier to try to keep it from happening to others."

It was the sort of work she liked, really. Because while there was sadness to many arrivals, every last one of the Rifters had a story of some kind. She loved learning about their new worlds and their different ways of doing things.

And she had picked up one thing. "There's at least one pattern," she said. "Everyone I've talked to was drifting off to sleep when they fell through the rift."

Some random garden area between point A and point B?

Sounds good! o/

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