crystal.

[byblow]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Alistair
RECIPIENT: Everybody everywhere
WHAT: Road games for everyone including those not on the road
WHEN: On the long trip from the Sunless Lands back to Kirkwall
NOTES: (1) Please threadjack and post your own would-you-rather top levels to your heart's content. (2) I think new rifters won't have their own official crystals until they get back to Kirkwall but please just have them participate over someone's shoulder or whatever else for fun.

I'm not actually walking across Ferelden again, because I'm not allowed to be in Ferelden, but if I were, you know, I think I would deserve some kind of medal. The Medal of Trudging. Awarded for walking clear across a country way too many times.

Anyway.

[ Anyway. The unspoken point is that he is bored, and it's time for a game. ]

Would you rather— [ continued in comments for organization's sake. ]

Comments

[justice_is_blond]

[He's very quiet for some time, lost in his thoughts. When he speaks, his voice is hushed.]

I don't... I don't want to be the cautionary tale. I don't want to be the model of what happens when everything goes wrong, and how it can go even more wrong. I... I won't be forgotten. But I don't like my story.

[nadasharillen]

[It's her turn to be quiet, although she hasn't shut off the crystal connection, so it's vaguely companionable. There's quiet laughter in the background, other people's jokes, other jokes turned serious.

Eventually she speaks up again, matching his volume, her cadence slow and halting.]

I don't know what story you have that makes you feel that way, Anders. Maybe that's heartening; to remember that we aren't just one story, but a weave of them. Or maybe it's scary and reminds you that not all threads are equally thick, and it's terrible to feel like the rest of who you are is going to be choked out and forgotten. That you're only... whatever it is happened to you.

You might not want to be a cautionary tale, but... there's someone out there you haven't met, who maybe you'll never meet, who needs to hear it--and not just as some moralizing yarn. Someone angry, or sad, or scared, or hopeless, or lonely, who's had things go wrong and then even more wrong and thinks there's no-one else who could possibly understand.

Maybe if it's hard to endure it for yourself, you can do it for them?

[a little amused puff of breath]

Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. It's likely.

[justice_is_blond]

I... Maybe.

[That's a side of it he hasn't considered before, a comforting side, when he doesn't know that he deserves to feel like his story can help people. Then again, there's Colin, who calls him heroic and looks up to him.]

I've met one that that it helped.

[Does that balance things out? For the thousands that know him only for what he did, does one knowing the path that lead him there and finding hope in it make that easier?

He takes a slow breath.]

It, it is scary, to know that everything, everything's going to be distilled to one thing. To not be a person even while I'm still alive, but a... a figure. There are days it feels like far too much. But if it helps some of my people... Thank you, Nari.

[There's another short pause.]

If you want the story, short form or long, I can share it.

[nadasharillen]

It sounds like something best told over a quiet cup of tea rather than in the road, although you're welcome to join me in the packtrain. I've set myself up in the wagon that's carrying all the extra warm weather gear.

[She's not slacking. She's... doing inventory.]