sixthiterationlogs | (no subject)

WHO: Corsina Surana
WHERE: The fountain park, the inn
WHEN: May 21st
OPEN TO: Corsina's arrival is locked to Hawke, and I'm taking up to five threads for the OTA portion at the inn.
WARNINGS: N/A, will update if needed.
STATUS: Open

the fountain; locked to Astrid Hawke

The first thing Corsina is conscious of is that she can't breathe. Her lungs feel on fire, burning pain and a tightness in her chest like — like drowning, and the second thing she realizes is the reason her limbs feel slow and heavy: she's in water, although she can't for the life of her recall how or why. Among the things Corsina learned at the Circle and with the Wardens, swimming wasn't really one of them — but she can tread water a little, and her arms and legs work just enough to propel her to the surface.

She breaks through the water with a gasp, and probably would have sunk right back below the surface if not for the instinctual grab at something that turns out — when she can get her breath and her bearings enough to focus — to be the rim of a stone fountain. She clings onto it for a while, trying to get a sense of where she is. She's in what looks to be a courtyard of some sort with the fountain at its center, but there are buildings in the near distance; this must be a village of some sort, although not like anything she's ever seen.

Corsina pulls herself out of the fountain, waterlogged and still gasping for breath a little. She remembers where she was — in Denerim, although she was supposed to travel to Amaranthine in a few days, to take up possession of the fortress Vigil's Keep as a new central base for the Fereldan Grey Wardens. This — she doesn't know where this is, but it's nowhere near Denerim nor Amaranthine, of that much she is certain. She's dressed in strange clothes — trousers and shirt made of some plain blue-green fabric, and heavy brown boots with laces — and the heavy weight on her back turns out to be a pack, though she doesn't yet try to open it to see what's in it, overwhelmed just from the realization that she's nowhere near where she was and fighting not to panic at the idea that she must have been kidnapped somehow, there's no explanation for this that makes sense otherwise.

"Where in the Maker's name—" she manages, half of a breathless sentence as she sits right back down on the rim of the fountain.

She'll recover in a few minutes and get to finding someone who can tell her where she is and what's going on. She will. But right now — right now this is all a little bit much.

the inn; open

Corsina's had a few things explained to her now, and realized a few things about herself and why she feels so strange, but even so, there's still a sense that maybe this isn't really happening. Everything's fine; it has to be. This is a dream and she'll wake up, or someone will come and rescue her, or — something, because she's not processed the idea that being trapped here might be for good.

Hawke has been kind to her, but eventually she has to leave the house to take a walk, try to clear her head and get a sense of her surroundings. She's trying not to be intrusive and look into people's houses, but there's a large building that looks like it might be a common building of some kind.

Stranded in this strange village she might be, but she pushes open the door and — well, she knows a tavern when she sees one. There's a small sigh of relief — finally, something that makes some kind of sense — and she takes her time to look around, examining the tables and chairs, the fireplace, and then moving a bit further into the kitchen.

Corsina doesn't know what she was expecting, but she startles a little on seeing someone else in the kitchen. "I'm sorry," she says. "I... didn't realize there was anyone here."

It sounds silly as she says it; she's not quite blushing, but a rueful, self-deprecating smile pulls at her mouth. Everything about this entire situation is throwing her off. Warden-Commander she might be, but right now she feels more like the sheltered girl from the Circle that she used to be than anything else.

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Fenris turns, sharply, his head twitching around to peer back over his shoulder at the sound of the voice. He's never been able to shake that, even now that Danarius has been dead for years and nobody has sent slavers after him since. He's been fighting slavers, and none of them have tried to claim him as a magister's property.

He still has the reflexes of a fugitive, though, and he's ready to fight if he has to, unconsciously tensed at the startling voice.

It's a woman, with reddish hair and a slight build. Unarmed, and therefore no obvious threat, in a place in which he apparently no longer need fear attack by magic.

"Ah," he says, turning away from the strange device that provides water into the inn, just as one does in Hawke's house. "No need to apologize. There do not seem to be many people here at the moment."

Edited 2017-05-25 04:45 (UTC)

"I suppose not," she agrees. "Still, I'm sorry to have startled you." She can tell she did, from the sharpness of his reflexes, the quick twist of muscles that pulled him round to face her.

He's got an interesting look about him, she thinks, catching what seem to be tattoos poking out from the neckline of his shirt and climbing up his neck to his face. Corsina only knows what she was taught about magic in the Circle, mostly, and the lyrium branding isn't familiar to her. It hardly matters now, regardless.

"I've just got here. I have to say it's a little disorienting," she admits, and almost laughs at how vast an understatement that is.

"Disorienting is the least you could say," he says, agreeing in his own way, which is less snide than it would have been had he not been spending time around Hawke again lately. "There is a woman called Kate Kelly who often looks after the tavern, but I don't know where she is. People seem to come and go."

He pauses for a moment, caught as he is invading the tavern's kitchen with a glass of water in his hand. Once, there'd been a time when he'd broken into kitchens to steal food, because it was steal food or survive, but there's a respectability -- albeit tenuous, coming hand in hand with notoriety -- in being one of Hawke's companions that had given him some coin along with something more than just the marked status of runaway slave. He hadn't had to steal food for a long time before he found himself here.

He supposes, though, that he wouldn't actually have to run for it, here, on being discovered. He's well aware that people are welcomed to meals here, regardless of who they are or of any ability to pay, since currency is hardly a consideration here. Many things he's used to are not considerations here, but one thing is, and that is where a person is from, and for all he can tell little about her in the plain clothes their captors put people in, he can hear something.

"You sound Fereldan."

Kate Kelly — she memorizes that name, because if there's anything Corsina has learned it's that the person who knows the most in any given town is the local innkeeper, and if nothing else it would be a good idea to get on her good side.

She wasn't quite this shrewd, in the Circle. How the Blight changed things.

"Is it obvious?" Corsina says, with a quick whimsical flash of a smile. She knows it is; she's spent her whole life in Ferelden, and until now had never left its borders. "I'm Corsina. Corsina Surana."

Recently Warden-Commander of the Grey Wardens of Ferelden, recently of Kinloch Hold — though if he doesn't recognize her name and thus realize she's a mage, she's not going to advertise it.

They'd made a big fuss of it, after she'd been appointed Warden-Commander — the first elven mage to hold that post. She really, really wishes they wouldn't fuss.