sixthiteration | Test Drive 23

It has to take place in the 6I universe.
It cannot be the character's arrival into the game.
Please only test new characters who do not have a version in the game. Our cast list is here.

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Prompts

FULL VIEW - The Observers really do their best to make each villager's wrist device as user-friendly for them as possible, but with all new tech, sometimes there's a learning curve... And sometimes, you just screw up. Like now, when you've accidentally triggered the video option and called someone completely random on the network without realizing it. Yep, you're just going about whatever, totally oblivious. Here's to hoping that your clothes are fully on, and that the person on the other end is nice enough to speak up sooner rather than later.
SHADOW OF A DOUBT - Being the intrepid (or just bored) villager you are, you've gone exploring and found yourself a very interesting (if moderately spooky) cave. What lurks in the dark? Might it be some shadow dust to turn you intangible? Or perhaps a cave wolf with all of its little goblin-monkey friends? Maybe, just maybe, it's both.
ILL AT EASE - 'Tis the season for the common cold, and you've got it. Unfortunately, the village doesn't have a corner drug store, so you're achy, miserable, maybe a little feverish. The good news is a little time in bed should do the trick. That is, if you're not the sort who has to be bullied to take care of yourself anytime you get sick. Either way, maybe you'll be lucky enough to find someone to tuck you in and bring you some chicken soup.
WILDCARD - Choose your own adventure. Maybe play powers roulette.
NETWORK - All characters are fitted with a smart watch-like device on their left wrist, which they can use to send text and video messages to other villagers. Text and/or video are allowed, any length. Display names may be changed by characters on the fly, but anyone can tap to see someone's real full name.

Please list your CHARACTER NAME, CANON & PROMPT NAMES in your SUBJECT LINE.

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He doesn't often hunt in the woods- but the weather still cuts cold through him enough that vague notions of a wild game stew comes to mind- and that means hunting. Something more substantial than fish chowder helps warm the bones.

Silent in the shadows he just about has a bead on a stag when the air's cut through with the sharp, ragged stab of a sneeze, leaving him with an arrow knocked at nothing at all.

"Brasca." He mutters, setting his arrow back in his quiver, eyes slipping about to find the source of the sneeze. "Perhaps take yourself inside? There should be a spare chair near the hearth at the inn."

Far, far away from where he is attempting to hunt.

Zevran's disembodied voice floats out at her from the trees and Harry straightens a little, going still, then turns to squint past the snowy treeline. Sneezing, coughing, hallucinations? That didn't seem right.

"...No," she tells Zevran's disembodied voice, because if it is a hallucination, she certainly isn't about to let it tell her what to do.

Edited 2019-02-04 23:25 (UTC)

"No? No. I am trying to hunt-" He swings down from the branches, shouldering his bow as he approaches. "And you, Mia Dama, are scaring away the game. Nevermind that you cannot possibly be providing a helpful watch while you are so ill."

A torrent of emotions flit across her features, never quite landing or solidifying, leaving the impression of wistful disbelief more than anything else. And recognition, of course.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, taking fully two steps toward him before the wrongness of his greeting catches up with her and whatever hint of smile was playing at the corners of her mouth fades, entirely.

"Why don't you know me?"

"Hunting. As I said." That is-

Strange, the longing in her eyes. He tries to place her face, to find something and-

There is an echo of familiarity in her bone structure. If he tilts his head and squints, imagines her taller, a broader jaw, a lower voice- "Either this place has driven me mad or- is your Surname Cousland?"

"Yes," she all but bites out, incredulity edged with sarcasm to dampen the sudden flare up of hurt. Wrung out as she's felt from the chills and coughing and the pressure in her head, she finds herself woefully ill-equipped to face whatever this is.

"It was, of course it- What is this?" It wasn't the Fade, couldn't be, and anyway, what sense would it make for a demon to take his form and then simply not know her?

"Crossways timelines meeting where they ordinarily would not. The Warden I followed during the Blight was named Jonas Cousland. You could be his twin sister." Again, if one squinted. But- she is A Warden. Having met Alistair it's easier to accept, perhaps, than it would be otherwise.

"...Alistair had a different warden still, a Dwarven lass of the Adeucan family. So far no one from our world is entirely the same."

"Wh- I- N-" she starts, and fails, before reaching a hand out to hover her fingertips a scant few inches in front of his mouth. She has to close her eyes, squeeze them shut hard, for a moment, gathering herself against the fog in her head, before she drops her hand and meets his eyes.

"Alistair is here. Is here. And you both- neither of you..."

She turns away from him, has to, because the urge to wrap her arms around her dearest friend and hug the breath out of him is nearly overpowering, only he isn't, because he doesn't know her, so she ought probably refrain. She drags a hand fitfully back through her hair, gripping the messy knot of it, and stays that way for some long moments. When she speaks her voice is as ragged with illness as it is fiercely suppressed emotion.

"You know, my parents argued over my naming. Fergus had been so easy, but my mother was of an age that made them fairly certain I would be his only sibling. They had two great ancestors to honor, and decided if I were a boy, it would be my great-great uncle Jonas, the first Cousland Teyrnir."

She drops both hands to her sides, shaking her head slightly. Could the Eluvians do that, too? Show you other worlds? She'd heard no whispers of it. It made discovering the nature of this place feel that much more urgent. And unlikely.

"But they had me." She turns back to look at him sidelong, smile tight, edging on bitter.

"And you don't know my name."

"...If you are anything like the Warden that saved my life? That spared me and gave me room to be more than what the Crows willed me to be?" He's slow in his approach, one hand lifted until he's able to meet her. Rest it on her shoulder and look her in the eye-

So familiar a gleam. So familiar a grace, a steadiness despite the different frame, the different name. "If you are the Warden that led us through the Deep Roads and to victory? That fought the Archedemon? I know what it is I call you."

Too simple, here, to say the word saved for so few. To tug her in, one arm about her shoulders, windchilled cheek pressing against hers. She feels- right. Too warm by far, but right enough. "Amica."

It breaks in her chest, then her eyes, as she hugs him back powerfully, shoving her face into thick fabric at this shoulder. It's been years since she's seen any of them, and Maker's breath, hearing the endearment in that honeyed tone is almost more than she can bear. It's a kindness, an incredibly generous extension of himself to someone who is, truly, a stranger, and she couldn't be more grateful.

That Alistair is there, somewhere, that's something she can't focus on. Not yet. It will ruin her.

"I've missed you so fucking much," she says.

"How long has it been for you? Alistair had not seen me in a decade- I am from the celebration just after we ended the Blight." So far behind. So much to come that he does not know, so much he has to navigate without understanding. Zevran holds her tight, tucks her close against his slim frame- and resolves to let hunting slide for the rest of the day.

She isn't well.

"Come. I shall take you to the inn, we shall warm you up." Tea. Tea and chowder and something baked. Something to warm her through.

She gasps when he says it- he's barely left the Blight behind- and the sudden intake of cold air sets her lungs to spasming and her to coughing, turning her face from him and into the collar of her own poor coat. She doesn't need to repay his kindness with infectious disease.

"Not so long as that," she chokes out when it's subsided. "My current mission allowed our paths to cross, briefly, a few years back."

She tucks back up against him immediately and lets him set their course, implicitly trusting. If it is the Fade, if he is a demon- fuck it, in all honesty.

"But it has been ten years since the Blight. What a pity you can't tell me how gracefully I've aged," she sighs, fingertips brushing along her own cheekbone with an air of mock-vanity, traveling to push a few wild wisps behind her ear.

She'd been seventeen at her joining. It hardly feels real, to be approaching thirty and be so much farther from home than she could ever have imagined.

"Was I as dashing as ever?" He murmurs, patting her back gently through the coughing fit. It's a hacking, wet cough- the like of which he's heard in plague victims, but this place has no plagues to fear and physicians enough. With a careful hand around her shoulder, he guides Madame Cousland back to the inn.

To the hearth, to tea, to mulled wine. To preserved healing peaches. "You are the very picture of health and youthful vigor, Amica."

He turns, illness or no illness, to brush his lips against her cheek. Teasing and friendly and the same he'd offer Alistair or Jonas, for she is just the same, is she not? "You could share your world with me, if you like- but I feel as though aside from your lovely chest and name, you are much the same as the man I knew."

"Are you mocking my poor health or was that a really atrocious pass?" she asks, entirely unbothered by it either way, smiling a little at the touch of his mouth.

"If you get sick, it's the fault of your own altruism, no bitching about it to me."

After a few steps it occurs to her that, however much he might insist on calling her Amica, and however much it may be a balm each time he does, he ought to know her proper name.

"It's Harry, by the way. Well, Angharad. But," she shrugs. Whatever else is one to do with a name quite so weighty as Angharad but choose the nickname that could most undermine its grandeur.

"Yes? Yes." He shoulders the door to the inn open, leading her to a chair close to the roaring hearth. Warmth and a good meal ought to help with this hacking illness. "I'll be fine. Illness does not translate to elves so easily as it does to humans."

Other illnesses, of course, do gut him regularly that don't quite hit humans the same way- but it is simply how their various strange bloods work. "Let me fetch you some tea, Harry."

Without batting an eye. Like it's something he's said many a time, without making a thing of it. Tea, stew, a good hunk of warmed bread. "Wasn't that your great Aunt's name? On your mother's side."

The fondness is overwhelming, and she fears it's going to come leaking out her eyes. She smiles at him, accepts the offerings when he returns with a hoarse "Thank you," and sips the tea first. When she speaks again, her voice a little more it's usual tone, only slightly lower for the sickness.

"It was. What an absurd detail to remember." She smiles, more at ease for being in his presence, sinking into the chair more deeply than she might normally.

"And for posterity's sake, you were exasperatingly, unbearably dashing, for the duration of our acquaintance. Nice when things don't change."

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Test Drive 23

Ill at Ease

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