sixthiterationlogs | i'm losing my mind

Entry tags:

i'm losing my mind

WHO: Astrid Hawke
WHERE: By the forest in 6I, then all over
WHEN: October 7th
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: TBD

In all honesty, for the longest time Hawke has been expecting something to blow up. Ever since the earthquakes and especially since the eclipse and the rash of illnesses, she has been expected something to happen. A darkspawn invasion, the world to implode, a Rift into the Fade. Something. But for the most part, things have been relatively normal. For whatever passes as normal in this strange little village.

So when she spies what looks like a pear tree in full bloom, complete with actual pears, she is both suspicious and intrigued. Pears are good. Pears mean food. She's more interested in food than a lot of things here and though she isn't much of a farmer or a gardener, she isn't about to let this one go without at least trying it. So, even though she also doesn't have a basket or anything to carry a lot of them back, she decides she'll at least pick one to try. If they're ripe, she'll come back for more later.

Reaching up, she chooses the one that looks the best, twisting her hand once she's grasped it and tugging until the pear comes free. What she doesn't expect is for the thing to vanish. One of her eyebrows arches and she turns her hand over. No sign of the pear at all can be seen on her hand.

Case of the vanishing peach, is what she wants to say. Except nothing comes out. She mouths the words, but no sound can be heard. It's like the air won't even push through her throat right. She tries again. Same result. Now her expression morphs into something like irritation. She can't even make terrible puns to cope without her voice!

This better not be permanent.

Deciding to avoid any other peaches that might be skulking around, she heads out of the forest and back towards the village. Her first stop is the Inn, where she looks for something to eat just in case it's some sort of illness that just needs a good bowl of soup. When that doesn't seem to do the trick, she leaves for the hospital. Eventually, she wanders around the village, looking grumpy and put out, and ends up back at the house she's sharing with Fenris. It's easier just to be there than anything else.

With her luck, this will be permanent and she's certainly going to sulk and complain for as long as it lasts.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wanda continued on with her days as normal. Earlier in the week Clint had gotten bunny ears but it had only lasted for an hour. Given the other strange things that happen in the village, it wasn't really so bad. He appeared healthy and it had past. She wondered if something similar would happen to others-- vanishing fruit --but she gave no attention to it. It wouldn't last forever and as long as they were careful they wouldn't end up with bunny ears. She hadn't realized the affects might vary.

When Hawke walked into the inn Wanda waved. It was one of the few people that Wanda spoke too on a semi-regular bases and while she didn't trust the girl completely, she was a nice distraction from the craziness of their cage.

Wanda was finishing up her work in the kitchen when she turned towards Hawke. There was a towel in her hand as she finished cleaning up after her work. "How are you today?"

Vanishing fruit is something Hawke had not expected. She hadn't seen it coming and she would still really like to have her pear back, but so far it's still gone. Still vanished. Times she wishes Merrill were here to be her magic-expert. Hawke misses Bethany, of course, but Merrill was always the one she asked about anything strange.

Vanishing pears definitely count as strange.

Still, at least she recognizes a friendly face in the kitchen, for better or worse. As soon as she spots Wanda, she brightens up and mouths hello before returning to her grouchy sulk when nothing comes out. Taking a deep breath, she lets it all out in a rush, clearly trying to scream. Still nothing. Sulkily, she points at her throat. She'd be fine if she could talk. And then she lifts a hand and turns it over towards Wanda, as though asking how Wanda is in turn.

At first, Wanda wasn't sure what Hawke was doing. It was obvious that she was trying to talk, scream even, but no sound came out. Her brows furrowed in a worried bend as she inspected her friend. Nothing appeared to be off but Wanda wasn't sure what had happened and she had a sinking feeling that Hawke might not be able to tell her.

"I'm fine." She waved off the concern as if it was completely ridiculous. "Something happened to your voice. Can you tell or show me what?"

After a pause, Wanda ducked from behind the counter to the bulletin board. She grabbed a bit of the paper there and tore off a blank piece before returning to where Hawke was standing. She then went on the brief search for a pencil. This was a little harder but after a moment of placing a stick of wood in the fire, she had a makeshift ashy pencil.

"Can you write it?" Wanda had never paused to think that maybe Hawke didn't know how to write or how to write in a language that Wanda knew.

Writing utensils are so uncommon here that Hawke hadn't even considered the idea. So when Wanda pulls out something for her to write on, she brings her hand up to her head and sighs. Great one, Hawke. At least someone here is smart.

Taking the paper and pencil, Hawke leans over the table and begins to write in oddly precise penmanship for someone of her class. Blame her noble-born mother for that. When she finally turns the paper around and offers it back, she's written something simple. Nothing is peachy when your peaches vanish and steal your voice.

Wanda reached out to steady the piece of paper. The light hue of green eyes runs over the lettering before she looked back up at Hawke.

--peaches vanish--

It was the same as Clint though he had gotten bunny ears. "It poofed?" For lack of a better descriptor. "That happened to Clint a week or so ago." It was hard for her to keep time here. "A fruit vanished and then..." Her voice trailed off and a smile twitched at her lips. She managed to suppress it, not wanting Hawke to think that she was laughing at her.

"Well, it went away after an hour. Maybe it'll just take time."

Hawke nods at the "poofed" question and then mimes a disappearance out of her hand. The thing vanished out of her hand and somehow stole her voice with it. She does tilt her head at the idea of something like this happening to someone else and she leans over to write something else: What happened to Clint?

The idea of this only lasting an hour is very appealing. Maybe she'll get lucky and it won't be permanent.

Wanda bit her lower lip to stop herself from smiling. She knew that she shouldn't laugh. Hawke losing her voice was serious except that thinking of Clint with bunny ears was really entertaining.

"He grew bunny ears for an hour." She placed the time stamp on there for Hawke's sake. It wasn't exact since Wanda had no good way of measuring time but the large floppy bunny ears had eventually gone away on their own. "They were attached but he didn't feel them. He also had a fruit disappear in front of him."

There was one similar thread between the events.

Hawke huffs out a breath of air that actually comes out silent and that seems to annoy her even more than not being able to talk. Not being able to make vocal noise is far more irritating. How can she get her sarcastic thoughts and reactions across like this?

Bending back over the paper, she scrawls out something new: I should warn Fenris about the vanishing fruit. Which does mean leaving, but hopefully this will all wear off soon and she can come back and have a proper conversation with Wanda again. Besides, the last thing she needs is for Fenris to get caught unaware and have to endure this sort of magical issue. He hates magic far too much already.

Wanda nodded her head before passing over the paper and pencil to Hawke. "There aren't much in the way of supplies but take these until your voice returns." She had confidence that it would but Hawke needed a way to talk to people until then; even if it wasn't ideal.

"I'll talk to you later." Hopefully.

Steve had been mostly on his own scouting around the canyon wall and the forest in the nearby vicinity of it since he arrived. It wasn't that he was anti-social, but he wanted to get the hell out of dodge and making friends and getting accustomed to whatever this was supposed to be wasn't going to help with that. Now though he'd scouted out all of this side of the canyon and they were in fact sealed in except for the small passage to secondary village. The water on that side certainly had his attention and he hoped would be a way to escape but he'd noted the weather starting to change. Living in the woods would soon become more problematic than integrating himself into those already here.

Walking back to the main village, Steve first hears then sees Hawke come out of the forest to the left of him. He stops and waits for her to come close enough, when she does he sees that she's not happy. "Is everything okay?"

Hawke spots the man, an unfamiliar face among the ones she's seen so far, though she doesn't alter her course to avoid him. Nor does she intentionally catch his attention. Once he speaks, she stops, glancing at him with a look that speaks well to her irritation.

She opens her mouth to say, Oh, everything's fine. Just another non-vocal day, but only gets to fine before she gives up. Lifting her hands to both sides, she offers her a You tell me sort of look. Clearly, she is not doing quite as well as she might like.

Her look of irritation is met with a raised eyebrow. Although he's been here roughly a month he still has no clue as to what this place is capable of or what could possibly have happened to her. Bad day, he's guessing, but he couldn't even start to guess as to how...

Until she opens her mouth and there is no sound. Her behavior speaks as someone who is used to having a voice when they speak and that clues him into the idea that this is what the problem is. The raised eyebrow morphs into a frown and his voice is slightly confused when he asks, "You lost your voice?" She doesn't look to be sick. "How?"

Hawke huffs out an irritated breath of air. The silent huff seems to make her mood sour further, if the look on her face is any indication. She carefully points to a tree and then mimes picking a fruit off of its branches. She then flicks the fingers of the hand "holding" the fruit, as though to indicate that it vanished.

If she has to mime everything for the rest of her dead life, she is not going to be pleased.

It's not difficult to notice that she is far from impressed, but Steve ignores that for the most part as he wasn't the source of her frustration. Watching her movements he translates them to words, mostly to communicate that he understands, or if he doesn't then at least she's aware that he doesn't.

"You picked something off of a tree and then it disappeared... I assume you took a bite of whatever it was? Fruit maybe?" Tilting his head he makes a few assumptions. "Since you're not panicking, is it safe to assume that you've been here for a while, and fruit growing on trees don't normally act in this way? Yet this is one of those strange things that happen that I've been told about?"

After a brief pause he adds, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

He gets a thump-up for the first part, then down, and then up again. She'd picked something off a tree that disappeared, didn't take a bite, but yes it was fruit. She holds up two fingers and grins. Two out of three isn't bad for his accuracy rating. The rest gets a double thumbs-up, although she looks a bit more put out by it. This is definitely one of those things the Observers do every so often, most likely, though that doesn't exactly mean she's enjoying herself.

As far as what he can do, she shrugs. If she could talk, she'd ask him to be her translator, but then again, if she could talk, she wouldn't need one. Still, she appreciates the offer. Hopefully, it'll just wear off soon.

"Picked but not ate... And it was fruit." Once again putting his understanding into words. He chuckles lightly at her two out of three accuracy, but he's happy to see that he improved with the rest.

"Great. So don't pick any fruit. Narrows down what we have to eat for a bit..." Now he's just talking to fill in the silence. "Hopefully it's one of those things that wear off soon." Pausing a moment, he bites his lip. "You heading in to town? I could walk with you if you like..."

Taako's in a perfectly chipper mood, which is to say, the usual attitude of hyperactive unconcern that he adopts whenever he can't do a damn thing about his situation, so might as well roll with it. His constant wandering seems to have led him to another stranger, which is one of the things wandering is supposed to do. There are too few people here to go around without even a basic read on any of them. He waves with the hand that's not toting his latest catch of fish around. "Hail and well met and all that shit." He's yet to stumble across a better way to greet a potentially useful person than Maggie's old go-to. Either they eat that crap up, they're confused and/or cynical, or they immediately demonstrate how not-well this meeting is gonna go and you can work from there. He can deal with all those options.

Normally, Hawke would reply with something reasonably snarky, especially given the end of this strange person's sentence, but at the moment all she can do is glare at him and fold her arms over her chest. And sulk. Cynical is more Hawke's typical flavor for responses and this is close enough. Still, she isn't always rude, so she tilts her head and then lifts one hand to wave briefly before settling it back where it was.

Hello to him, too.

Taciturn is a possibility, certainly, and he rolls with that assumption for now. It's not like he's so great at correctly observing social norms himself. He's honestly more interested by the silence than he would have been by a similarly rote greeting. Because hail and well met and shit is rote for him. "Strong silent type?" He is hilarious.

That gets an even deeper glare from Hawke. If Aveline were here, she'd have her friend threaten some good sense into him. Aveline is always good for that. Or Fenris could knock him around a bit. She's sure he'd like that. As it is, all she can do is point at her throat, make talking noises with her hand, and then turn it palm-up in a shrug.

She just can't talk today.

"If somebody got a silence incantation off, you should know that's an area effect. You could just leave." He hopes that's what happened. He's sniffed out plenty of instances of magic as he recognizes it, but he's still on the lookout for more. Any little hint is one potential step closer to cracking whatever has his own spellcasting locked down.

Hawke has been around enough mages to know what spells are normally like. This "advice" sours her mood even further. Turning, she points off in the direction of the tree she'd found earlier before attempting to mime picking a fruit off. She's well away from where she'd been when she picked the fruit, but the rules in this place don't follow normal rules.

Fortunately, he has a little context from poking his overlong nose in everyone's business whenever the opportunity arises. "Ooh, one of those. Cursed fruit really is a classic for a reason." He should find an enchantment specialist sometime and see if there's any special reason besides tradition.

Hawke raises an eyebrow at that. Classic cursed fruit? What? She lifts one hand palm-up and shrugs like she has utterly no idea what he's talking about. If he'd like to explain, that might help.

"You're not the first one around here. And I guess food is real handy if you're into the enchantment thing. I can see why, so that's probably the angle our friends up in the metaphorical bleachers are working." Puzzling out the fine points of the magic here keeps him sorta sane, and addressing their captors as irritating background noise just makes him happier.

"Hello, Hawke," Fenris says when he hears the door close, followed by the approach of footsteps.

It's a friendly greeting, more so than he'd generally give to anyone other than Hawke, whom he still considers something like a hostess here since she'd been here before he arrived. More than that, though, she's his friend and companion and the one person he's genuinely sure looks out for him for its own sake.

It's only when he turns that he sees the look on her face: scowling and sulky, like she'd been out on a tiresome errand she had to do for someone she didn't particularly like back in Kirkwall.

"What happened?" he asks, well aware that she can look out for herself, but also aware that he's her ally and companion here, with all the obligation that carries.

Honestly, Hawke would almost take one of those tiresome errands over this. At least then she'd be able to talk and make a joke about whatever awful thing someone's had her do. She could cope with that. This just makes her feel miserable.

Sulkily, she flops down on the sofa in the living room, sprawling out and leaning her head back against it, though there's plenty of room for him to join her. Lifting one hand, she points at her throat, mimes talking, and then turns her hand palm-up in a shrug. What happened is that she can't talk. And she is obviously not pleased by this development.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

i'm losing my mind

Inn

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Forest

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Forest

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject