Sixth Iteration

Fountain

Dreaming is always dangerous. Every night, mages enter the Fade in their dreams, bright and fascinating beacons to the demons that prowl the shifting realm. There is risk every time, being found, being tempted. Evelyn knows this, even in her slumber, and wages war against the easy way out every single night.

Tonight is different. Tonight there are no demons, no lurking spirits, no shifting of the landscape in a crazy array of her hopes and desires, of her mind wresting to make sense of her day. Not even a pleasing dream of time alone with Cullen. All she can see is water, with light overhead, and a desperate need to reach that light. Evelyn swims upwards, still wondering why the Fade should take the shape of deep waters, until she breaches the top and gasps for air. Inside a fountain.

This is a terribly peculiar dream.

She hoists herself out of the fountain and sits on the ground, blinking in the sunlight and holding up a hand to shade her eyes. Her left hand, in particular, where the Anchor still resides and yet is reacting to nothing at all. That is puzzling in itself. The hand is lowered back down into her lap where she runs a finger across the mark where it lays dormant. This must be the Fade, she's so certain of it, but why isn't the Anchor sizzling or popping or glowing as it is wont to do?

A test then. She reaches out her left hand to open a rift in the Fade to escape from, but nothing happens. Evelyn then attempts to pinch herself to force wakefulness. Again, nothing changes, nothing happens.

All alone and confused, Evelyn allows herself one brief moment of frustration in the form of a sigh. "What is happening now?"


Around Town

Given a couple of days to adjust and settle in, Evelyn has not adjusted. Not truly. She is very hard pressed to believe that this isn't the Fade and that she is merely unable to wake or exit. She's quite ready to and not just because the clothing she's in is foreign and hideous. Who wears such things anyway? Nor has she a hairpin or comb or ribbon to her name and it's made wresting with her long hair something of a nightmare. Her solution today has been to braid it, lightly knot the end and then wrap that into a knot at the nape of her neck. Serviceable enough but not pretty. Practical.

Nonetheless, she's more or less absorbed with thought as she roams the town, wandering as if lost. She is, though not in the way one might think. She mumbles the Chant under her breath, trying to steady herself and find comfort in that familiarity. Something Evelyn desperately needs for she's lost, lost as to what she should do. Lost as she was in those fateful days after being told the Circles voted to disband, to go home, she was "free." Free to do what? All her life had been spent in the shelter of the Circle. She knew neither how to sow seed nor bake bread, and her family certainly would not be taking their embarrassment of a mage daughter back under their roof for anything longer than the briefest of visits. She had no idea how to live outside then.

The Inquisition had given her direction, a purpose, something to justify her own existence. And now that too is gone. At least there she could put her education to use, she could investigate or collect elfroot. She knows nothing of these plants, nothing of the lands, and she has found no library with which to educate her ignorant self. That distressing reminder that she is quite useless in every way prompts her to wring her hands while resuming the Chant. All the while, her mind keeps churning over the same question again and again: What am I do to? She is no fool, she has no truly practical skills with which to keep herself alive or contribute in any meaningful way.