crystal;

[heirring]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Richard Dickerson & Wysteria de Foncé
RECIPIENT: You All
NOTES: The highly scientific results from studying a not-so-recent amputation, and a call for volunteers (don't worry, it's not volunteering to get your limbs chopped off). Wysteria is in blue. Richard is in green.

Hello everyone. This is Madame de Foncé speaking, accompanied by Mister Dickerson. There is a whole report written up on the matter which we wish to discuss today. Anyone curious will find it filed among the Project Felandaris records. However, we agreed [sure that's the word for 'Wysteria bullied Richard into it'] that discussing the broad points in a more public venue might do some good.

Go ahead, Mister Dickerson.

Dissection of Madame de Foncé’s arm revealed extensions of the anchor growing outward along the vascular system, confirming the existing supposition that as much of the affected limb should be taken as possible to ensure an anchor is truly separated from its host.

[ There is an odd beat where it seems likely Mister Dickerson is hoping for Wysteria to chirp back in before he continues: ]

It further appears that lyrium has an affinity for -- [ more quietly ] Rifter flesh, for lack of a more delicate distinction. When exposed to Madame de Foncé’s arm it made a fleeting attempt to regrow the parts of her that were missing. [ So the rest of the Wysteria? Another pause. He doesn’t deign to specify. ]

We believe it may hold promise as a healing agent for Rifters if applied topically.

[Which brings them to the true aim of this whole endeavor, the enthusiasm for which has Wysteria's clipping in so briskly after him that there's almost no pause at all between 'if applied topically,' and—]

And so Mister Dickerson and I would like to make a request for volunteers from among the Rifter population. We would like to make a more thorough study of the effects of lyrium on us. I have prepared a sort of sign up form and have posted it on the door of Project Felandaris' office. If you would please add your name to it, Mister Dickerson, and myself, and indeed the general record would be most grateful.

That's all. Thank you. Ask whatever questions you wish to.

[Slightly muffled then, as if the crystal has been lowered away from the general nexus of conversation, Wysteria continues on in the same breath, 'You see, Mister Dickerson? That wasn't painful in the slightest. I hardly see why you were so hesitant—']

Comments

[nonvenomous]

Miss Poppell -- [ is incorrect, smudged out and corrected for behind closed eyes, ] Madame de Foncé.

[ His bony fingers flex themselves in and out of a fist before he opens them again. ]

He cannot be convinced. You are the only person in Thedas he will forgive for removing him from the equation entirely. The blame will be entirely mine -- is entirely mine, for asking this of you.

[heirring]

But that is precisely my point, Mister Dickerson! If I agree to fetch you the name of a Warden from Orzammar—and truly, I have no objection to the basis of the idea whatsoever—it seems to me highly unjust to allow the consequences of the thing to be entirely yours. I would be your saboteur. No, I would be the very instrument of the thing—

[Here, a sudden sharp course change—as pointed and as surgical as a dagger punched between ribs.]

Do you count him among your friends, Mister Dickerson?

[nonvenomous]

[ This proves to be a challenging bout of resistance to butt up against, and an even more challenging question to answer. Mister Dickerson thinks to the letters tied up neatly among the belongings he’d pawed through in Ellis’ pack, the carved mabari, the dirty playing cards. Up until the last few seconds, he’s watched Wysteria as closely as she’s watched him. Now he looks down to hook his joint up out of its nest of porcelain teeth.

There’s still a coal glowing dull in the cherry for him to coax life back into.

A toke, smoke flushed harsh through his sinuses, something resettled in the muscle and bone that keeps his posture polite, in that he is still mostly facing her. He has made a mistake. ]

[heirring]

[Like a small dog pacing, Wysteria shifts on her seat but doesn't lower the point of her attention from him as he fishes up the joint. It is still there when that first new exhale of bitter smoke has dissipated.

(She is aware, very distantly, that the back of her neck is no longer hot. The flush of embarrassment which had lurked there must have faded.)]

Do you think he counts you as one?

[(Yes, he has made a mistake.)]

[nonvenomous]

[ Dick rolls one foot at the ankle while he smokes, boot leather too oiled and careworn to creak. He’s back to studying her again after a puff or two, the side-angled slant of a man who knows he will not make better choices in the future but wishes he would. ]

No.

[ He takes his time thinking about it.

They are very far afield of the subject of lyrium and touching other Rifters with it. ]

[heirring]

[The trouble with Wysteria Poppell—or Madame de Foncé, or whatever she is insisting on being called today—is that she is clever.

Indeed, life would be much easier for a great number of people if she weren't, or were slightly less so, or perhaps even if she simply wielded her attentiveness a little more even handedly. How is anyone meant to protect themselves from the laser of her perception being turned so abruptly in their direction when it's ordinarily engaged so thoroughly toward other ends?

Though, really. Mister Dickerson had been in possession if no answer for her first question and had a ready one for this one. The math is hardly difficult.]

But you would prefer it if he did.

[nonvenomous]

It is nice to have friends, isn’t it. [ Fellow human?

Smoke twists silky from the increasingly stubby roll of the joint between his fingers. There is a kit of equipment on his table already; he keeps his eyes on her as he reaches for it, as if his attention is the only thing keeping her from flying across the room at him like a great skirt-ruffled bat.

It doesn’t last. He has to look down again to unthread a pair of tweezers from its loop. ]

I believe this is irrelevant to the matter of my becoming a Warden.

[heirring]

[Good news: there's no sign of spreading wings just yet, ruffled or otherwise.]

You're wrong. You're asking me to do a very cruel thing, Mister Dickerson. To ruin your prospects with him. And to wound him. And then to act as if I had no part in it just because he will likely choose to ignore it.

Will it be worth it, do you think? [Shouldn't sound like a genuine question, but it does.] If you do have only a little time and use it all up on Wardening?

[nonvenomous]

[ The Felandaris office is too enclosed and too sparsely occupied for him not to have heard her. But fitting the joint in between the fine tips of his tweezers without spilling out the cherry or piercing the paper is precarious and the one hand’s been broken before, the peaks of his ears buzzing pink all the while, notch and all.

The ember is dark before the thing is done and he tilts the arrangement as it is, tweezers included, carefully back into the nug skull. Wholly at odds with the impulse that seizes tight through his chest while he’s still seated.

He’s free to unfold to his feet once it’s been overridden. ]

There’s no one else to do this work.

[ Reasonable. A little glassy-eyed, consistent with his drug of choice. ]

I’m going to step outside. You may say no and we’ll consider the matter settled.

[heirring]

[Despite all habits to the contrary—which suggest that she might be induced to sail across the room and there pounce on him, tearing his throat out directly with all the enthusiasm of a terrier down a rabbit's warren—Wysteria doesn't come displaced from her stool when he stands. She does straighten. The line of her spine draws up and the slant of her shoulders turns more squarely in his direction. But she makes no motion to halt him, her hand still pressed over the long-quieted crystal.

What is persistent—]

I will get you a name, Mister Dickerson. When I'm in Orzammar. I will find you a Warden. But I won't abandon you to Mister Ellis's disappointment anymore than I'll allow you hurt him. [Maybe Richard is right. Maybe he will forgive her.] I will find a way of encouraging him to see reason if it comes to that. Something to deflect the blow, as it were. You must let me do that.

[nonvenomous]

[ A fox ready to vanish out a side tunnel in a shake of his tail, Silas teeters uncertain for a moment with this victory that doesn’t feel like much of one in his jaws. ]

Thank you.

[ He crosses for the door.

He doesn’t quite make it out. He turns back at the threshold. ]

You hid your hand from us for months, [ he tells the jamb. ] You might have died. He would have been devastated.

[heirring]

[Where Wysteria had half turned on her stool to follow the line of his retreat, Wysteria pauses. From out of the corner of an eye or viewed off the edge of a door jamb, it can't look like much but the internal jerk against the ribs checks her, and her hand pressed tight over the crystal, and her empty sleeve pinned primly up in defiance of the arm lurking in a foggy jar in this very room. She lapses into an abrupt, jagged quiet.

(Ah, there is that prickle again on the back of her neck—hot at the base of her skull, guilt biting at pride's scruff. At one point, hadn't that been something she'd wanted? For someone to be very devastated at the prospect.)]

I'm [feels very difficult to work out, that first syllable. It must be pried free.] Sorry to have been a worry to anyone.

[nonvenomous]

You suffered for it.

[ Matter of fact -- a hall pass for further apology. It’d be disingenuous for him to stand there and slant shade as if she sashayed out of that ordeal without trauma of her own. He knows, patience packed down into heat under pressure in his glance back. ]

But please don’t lecture me on cruelty.

[ He doesn’t wait to see if she’ll make eye contact with him, dropping away through the door like a rat off the edge of a dumpster. BYE. ]

[heirring]

[It's a canny escape, avoiding both her look in return and the first impulse to say— she doesn't know what. But there is something just there behind her teeth that doesn't have the time to develop past the breath required to speak it before he's barrel rolled beyond the threshold.

That inhale will have to satisfy itself with being exhaled again, just like she will have to satisfy herself with shuffling her papers around instead of crossing her arms until the heat under her collar can be induced to fade.]

That isn't at all what I meant, [she insists to the empty room once she has decided that's true. It's very annoying that it takes so long to arrive there, she decides also. And equally so that no one is around to hear her say so.]