(OPEN) It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones

[veilfires]

Who: Solas & Iramaat, Solas & Petra, Solas & an open prompt!
When: mid May!
Where: Undermael’s library, and the Outer City!
What: Fae transformation research and the Out of the City quest! Ruminations on healthcare and class divisions!
Warnings: Nothing that isn’t Aef-typical!


i. heal (maiuril 18-25)
[It’s an ethical obligation: know the sickness for what it is, and, if it is within your means, help heal it.

Serious, immersed in his assigned work, Solas has been providing injections (and sometimes counsel) to the afflicted and forgotten of the Outer City since the early morning. He set out at dawn, dressed in plain Coven robes, matched now with the generic face mask and gloves handed out by the dozens to the volunteers.

The musky summer sun hangs directly overhead, exacerbating the humidity and the acrid, sick smell suffocating the Coven healers’ station. He’s been told it’s his break, so he leaves out the back, through a flap door. Outside, he pulls down his mask, and inhales the cooler air. He’s worked up a sheen of sweat, and the relief is palpable.

When he lifts his tired eyes again, they happen to fix on a newcomer. His thoughts have had a full day to rattle around inside his mind, and he feels compelled to speak them. In subdued undertone, he remarks, in lieu of a greeting,]

The healers here do good work. And they do so weighed down by futility. No matter how many they treat here today, come tomorrow the number of infected will have increased.


ii. wildcard
why not! solas spends the first ~two weeks deep in research, and then over the remainder of the month spends a lot of time volunteering and building links within the outer city. i have other plans i’d like to put into action and thoughts i’d like to toss around, though… so please feel free to hit me up with anything or reach out to me with ideas or requests at shroomish c:

Comments

[veilfires]

[Solas examines the powder. Exasperating, to not have at his fingertips the tools he’d like to use to analyse it. He knows a hundred minor spells to divine the nature and school of any magic – all useless here. Exasperating, also, that he wastes time with fruitless frustration while he mind fails to adjust to the lack.]

I have watched both the body and mind in a heartbeat change beyond recognition, [has himself changed beyond recognition,] but they are physical phenomena. The spirit is stronger, and made sharper by a sense of self, however embodied and manifested.

[Appropos of nothing a melancholy shade comes across his face. Strange, to be talking of the spirit with a human woman in a world absent of the Fade. He knows well how wrong his perception of her people had been, but that realisation changed nothing but to make his regret cut more sharply.

He returns in his next breath to the practical matter at hand.]

It recalls the glittering lazy chains trailed by the Fae, floating about their feast.

[ipseite]

Floating, ( she repeats, considering. the image he evokes is a lovely one, but the present, uncomfortable reality of it is another thing entirely. if she considers not bringing it up,

it feels a touch more inappropriate,

then she settles at last upon the thought that their scrutiny is unlikely to get far if she is not wholly honest about the experience. she needn't unlace her corset; they can merely discuss it. )

How should they come to be in the air? A purely magical impulse, or is there some—

Well, we speak of physical differences. What of wings?

[veilfires]

The fae fluttered on wings. [Purely magical impulse – he warms visibly to that phrasing.] Or appeared to – for could it not all be magic and illusions, for a people who make their homes in dreams?

[It chimes with his great preoccupation, which has fixated him more than ever now that he’s been torn from the Fade. He’s thought often of the fae – a people who are one with dreams, much as the People. But that’s not quite the point of their conversation – seeking to be more useful, he steps back from that tangent.]

They were glittering and insectoid, and of a hundred different types, to my eye.

[ipseite]

Well,

( her tone is unexpectedly a little rueful, more than anything else, )

I believe that may, perhaps, explain another facet of my present experience. I've been experiencing great discomfort, beneath my back. ( beneath the skin, she means; she is not abruptly talking about her own backside, generally covered by so many layers of fabric as to exist entirely in the theoretical to most people. ) An itch, an irritation. The...scales that you see seemed, when I managed to find them in a mirror, more concentrated there, and more—

( her nose wrinkles, slightly. this is a challenging topic to speak upon delicately, and it feels somewhat crass. )

Loose. They come away beneath fabric whenever I should move.

[veilfires]

[A finger is brought by habit to his chin. He listens attentively as though making a clinical assessment - one that precludes personal judgement. His answer, however, perhaps falls short of professional.]

The slow unfolding of wings, like the splitting of a chrysalis. [Not said without the delight that comes with any good magical surprise.] Such extensive transformation on a material plane... I never expected to see it.

I wonder if the fae always looked as they do? Perhaps they grew their wings in just the same manner when they took physical bodies - like my people’s pointed ears.

[ipseite]

The splitting is of some concern to me— ( but there's a genuine lightness to it. she doesn't feel as if she's coming apart so much as that she's coming together, differently; there's discomfort involved, but it doesn't feel like sickness. just strange, and a strangeness that she thinks will pass, or become familiar. every day that she doesn't wake up in her own bed with her own husband is a step towards this new normal.

she shouldn't want to build a life, but,

she misses the one she had less all the time. she only doesn't know precisely what this one will look like, yet. )

But your elven differences were chosen, then?

[veilfires]

Not exactly.

[Should he be so incautious with his words? He has made his own nature something to be kept secret, and so it would have to remain if this world had any connections with the Inquisition or any other half-way effective organisation. But it’s so satisfying to share his knowledge openly, and this feels as easy as if this were a dream and she a spirit.]

Why we look the way we do is unknown to me. [He is ancient, but his people far more so.] The spirits who chose to take bodies made themselves fit a shape that was first moulded in forgotten times. As you are being made to resemble the established form of a fae.