three truths

[meds4sale]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: The Medicine Seller
RECIPIENT: Everyone
NOTES: The Medicine Seller communicating with the world in more than three consecutive sentences? Hell has frozen over.

"Truth", like some glittering blade, both fascinates and frightens. Often it is spoken of as something absolute, something universal. But it never is.

I have wrested truths from people more times than I can count.

Again

and again

...and again.

Truth gives shape to Regret, and from Regret springs forth the Form...

[There is a pause and the sound of him taking a sip of something; tea or maybe something stronger. Who even knows.]

...I wonder if a place can hold Regret the same as a person?



Those esteemed gathered, let me ask of you


...your Truth and your Regret.

Comments

[aforethought]

Regretted listening to this shite. Some kind of magic gets loose and suddenly everyone's a bloody poet giving their debut. Reckon we could just have one of them open stage nights and take care of all this more regular. I figure it'd work, and that's the truth, so you get two-for there.

[meds4sale]

May I suggest then a pair of earplugs.

It is no more enjoyable to be compelled by this magic than to hear it, I am sure.

[aforethought]

Ain't me jawing, is it. Sounds like your fucking problem.

Anyway, you don't gotta look to sonnets for regretting being somewhere. Find any inn come dawn.

[meds4sale]

Then you have my deepest apologies for saddling you with my troubles.

I have been to many, many inns.

There is always something


...interesting

in them.

[aforethought]

[aforethought]

Was that wordplay.

[meds4sale]

One must sometimes pluck the low-hanging fruit.

[aforethought]

[ a snort, faintly approving — ]

Well it weren't half bad.

[meds4sale]

I am always happy to please.

[aforethought]

Don’t figure that.

[ isn’t everyone telling the truth today? kit didn’t collect anyone eager to please. and alright, maybe kit's a bit the point of this. ]

[altusimperius]

what

[meds4sale]

I am saying

that people poison themselves with lies.


And I wonder if such things can linger long after.

[altusimperius]

.....huh.

cw: death and what could be construed as suicidal thoughts?

[chainlightning]

[ Oh, no. ]

I killed them, [ she whispers. The words are muffled, like Merrill is trying to grab and pull at her own mouth, to hold her lips together - but it isn't stopping her Truth, as it were, or her Regret. ] I killed them instead of letting them kill my friends but I wish I would have let them kill me. Even though she was possessed, she did it to try and save me, and even though they wouldn't listen to why we had to kill her-

It was my fault-

[ There's a choking sound, and a 'clunk' as Merrill's crystal drops. ]

[meds4sale]

...Blame is easy to assign with hindsight.

What led up to you killing...


...them?

[chainlightning]

[ She sounds far away - because her crystal has been dropped, probably. ]

We found the eluvian. It was tainted but it was history, it was a piece of our past. Tamlen disappeared but I was able to fix it, to remove the taint, with Audacity's help-

[ She doesn't even quite seem aware of what she's saying. ]

-and they were afraid, afraid that I would hurt them all, so the clan made me leave; I went with Hawke to Kirkwall, I kept working, and then the Keeper made them all stay and then she let herself be possessed by Audacity and attacked and I killed her.

And my clan came, and they tried to kill me. And Hawke defended me and we killed them, too.

[justice_is_blond]

Merrill.

[His voice is stern.]

Please come to the Infirmary.

[There are things she needs to not say, like why they tried to kill her.]

[chainlightning]

[ Quietly: ] Okay.

Action

[justice_is_blond]

[He hangs a few curtains to make a small, more-private space in one corner. There are plenty of people spilling things they don't want to spill, but a majority of them aren't at risk of saying something that could get them killed. Probably. On second thought, considering this lot, half of them might be. But Merrill's is the only secret he knows for certain and the only friend he needs to protect right now from possible death.]

Private

[justice_is_blond]

Is this really a time to ask? Some people can't help but talk, it seems.