ooc: inbox/plot with me

[foxsays]

{sending crystal | notes & letters | personal visits}

Note: I work Mon-Fri and I'm basically away 11 hours a day but I do tags in gdocs and I try to do a round a night. Timezone is GMT.

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[rowancrowned]

Good evening, Serrah Araceli.

[ he calls at an hour fairly soon after the Gallows mess would have closed for the evening. his tone is polite, perfunctory. ]

This is not a social call, but rather one under the purview of Research. Would you mind describing, as best you are able, whatever you were doing shortly before you arrived in Thedas?

[ pause, shuffling of paper. ]

I am seeking to gather information about Rifters. As the Inquisition has stopped conducting formal interviews upon arrival, we do not have much documentation on the phenomenon for those of us who have arrived more recently. You are not obligated to answer, and are quite free to refuse.

[foxsays]

Of course, señor Thranduil.

Sleeping. I was asleep. [Two years later and she still remembers that, how abruptly she'd been woken up screaming in a strange land.] And then I was dumped into the snow.

It seems a silly thing to remember so clearly.

[rowancrowned]

Thank you, serrah.

[ there's something under that tone. relief? excitement? ]

[foxsays]

[When the lockpick slides in without a hitch, when the guards pass and don't look her way; he sounds how that feels.]

Can I ask, señor, what it is about knowing I was sleeping that has you sounding so? That I was woken from the middle of summer to be hurled screaming into the snow, with a demon reaching for me, my hand aflame as if stung?

[rowancrowned]

You have been here longer than I, [ he allows. she deserves this as much as he does. perhaps she will outlast him; someone else must have this knowledge. ] How was the Fade explained to you?

[foxsays]

A moment. [A door is shut - locked - and a drawer opened, papers pulled out that she hasn't looked through in some time but well, if this is going back so far the she'd rather check.]

A realm where spirits and demons dwell, that mages have a connection to it as well as the Veil being a magical vibration to repel it. That at night the Veil is thinnest since most are dreaming so they're present in the Fade; there was more from a young man. [Less sure about who the young man was, the memory is there but it slips when she tries to focus on it too hard.] He said Solas explained it to him once, that the Fade sang our memories back to us while we slept, and that was where dreams came from. It was about how he could hear the Fade calling but couldn't answer when we spoke about the shards: the song's scattered now, we can't afford to lose it again.

[The last words a quote, that phrase sticks out but never his face.]

[rowancrowned]

'Sang our memories back'. [ he repeats. ] The dreaming world is a reflection of the living one. Spirits and demons imitate it as best they are able, add in their own ideas, twist- they cannot make new things.

[ thranduil slips into the easy recitation of one rereading a passage they are familiar with. ]

'They create what they see through their sleeping visitors, building elaborate copies of our cities, people, and events, which, like the reflections in a mirror, ultimately lack context or life of their own.'

[ solas had disappeared, and left him without an expert to consult for these things, and so he had pulled his knowledge from books, and bits from mages, careful not to allow too many of them too much of the puzzle. ]

[foxsays]

That was the explanation I was given for burning their dead here, at least for the Andrastians. Spirits watch us, press close to the Veil out of curiosity. When so many die in a place then the spirits can come through and act out what they saw before.

[Given what Thranduil's said, it slots into place but her reading on the Fade was only ever enough to understand how it shaped the history, the politics. It wasn't something she thought she needed but maybe she's neglected it as she's made the efforts to fit in elsewhere.]

They possess the corpse of the deceased. Pick up their weapons. Stand up and fight. It's all they've seen.

[rowancrowned]

And if the spirits saw something else? [ this must make sense to someone else before he considers it to be true. someone else, presented with the information he was, ought to draw the same conclusion. he must be rational about it. ]

The Veil has torn, between the Fade and Thedas. What if the Veil also tore enough for glimpses of other worlds? For spirits to see other dreams? For the Fade to create few impressions, ones not seen before?

[ what if spirits found new dreams to act out? ]

[foxsays]

My understanding is limited, but if they can't create and saw something new-- they're called the Maker's First Children. Children copy things they see. Especially if it's new. [This time she's hesitant even if it makes sense to her because the question is if she wants it to. What does it mean, asking it?

No words can be unsaid, these even less.]

If we sit uneasily with them as whatever they've seen us as until now, asking that question is one you ask lightly around the people who rewrote so much of their own faith to suit themselves.

[rowancrowned]

Do you take me for a fool? [ thranduil asks, somewhat haughty. ] I ask you, and only you, because you have been here even longer than I, have seen more. You have found your place in this world, and can pass as one of them even with the shard in your hand.

[ he softens. ]

I seek the truth. For our sakes. This is not information I intend to pass beyond the two of us. I minded my questions, there is a cover in place should anyone come asking.

[foxsays]

And I am telling you that there are things a child does: she sits on her father's knee, picks up dice, rolls them in a cup and tips them over before she learns that her father plays at it because everyone at his table leans very close, and if she spots a lie there she spots it everywhere. [Talking about home like this isn't comfortable. Her voice won't stay level.] A little girl doesn't know why her mother paints her face but she'll still sit behind her dresser every night, take up the brushes and do it too.

There is a thing I was taught by someone dear. [Does that give her away? That hitch? That pause that feels like a little betrayal here and now like this.] About learning to play their games so people never suspect, because it's easier to make your way through life when no one suspects. When you don't ever give them pause to do it.

So I say that you ask me these questions now, after I read that they were the called the Maker's First Children. I think of lessons I learnt before I ever knew they were lessons, things I do without thinking, easy as breathing. Taps his fingers when he lies, won't look at me in the face because she's embarrassed to be seen with someone like me. Across worlds they mean the same thing. Sting the same way. Same lesson, same way of learning them maybe.

[She has tried so very very hard to fit in here. But there was a painful question when she forgot-- This isn't easy and she doesn't know why it makes her feel so small.]

[rowancrowned]

[ gently, with a hint of regret: ] I did not mean to distress you.

[ he lets her words sit, processes them. empathizes, as best as he can. she knows, now, better than he does, to have realizes that this is it. they are here, for better or worse, and they must bend or break under the weight of it. make plans for permanence, sow their seeds, expect a harvest on all their deals and promises. ]

I do not think- [ no, that's not right. again: ] You have my suspicions, and I have your insight. I thank you for it.

[foxsays]

There are things I try not to talk about. I wouldn't want to give her those worries.

[Some things you share and fix. Other things you share and they sit there between you, growing larger, uglier, all teeth and claw. (Sometimes there are worries enough. And she likes her life here. Likes digging in her heels to fight to make it better even if she could throttle people with her exhaustion.)]

You're welcome. If you'll excuse me, I have some letters it's long past time I gave to where I always should have sent them to. [The sea is by her window. Why did she keep them all under her floorboards instead of giving them to it after all this time?]