therookery | crystal

( Behold, a new voice on the crystals. Soft, good-humoured, with an accent that sounds Scandinavian / relative equivalent. The crystal catches a quiet breath of laughter before she speaks. )

I don’t know if you’re really lucky to have an engineer turn up, or if I’m really unlucky that I need to figure out the machinery.

I mean, learning about the infrastructure of a city in a whole different world isn’t even a “once in a lifetime” kind of opportunity, and pretending I’m some sort of genius at kinetic motion just because I know some mechanisms from home would be pretty fun, but…

Wow.

( Maybe that sounds a little weightier than her first "wow.")

Oh, I'm Abella. Riftwatch, you’re gonna have to have a lot more ramps by the time I’m done with you. Somewhere has to accommodate wheelchair users, even if it’s some kind of fairy tale world.

( Hmmm. )

Wait, can you just make them float, here? (More softly, ) Flying wheelchairs would explain the lack of ramps. I mean, this crystal thing is remarkable, so... let me know if I don't need to think about the ramps.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I get that. You stepped in it, but it's not 100% your fault. There are lots of times people would have just rolled their eyes or made a sarcastic comment or something, you just hit an especially sensitive moment. And, like, I think people who aren't rifters sometimes ... My world doesn't have any magic, as far as I know. It was a bit of a learning curve, people forget it can be a lot to take in.

But hey, it sounds like you hooked up with Viktor, who I was totally going to recommend to you. And it's not like you're wrong about mobility broadly. When I first came to Kirkwall, I was dealing with a lung disease, the stairs weren't a picnic even if my legs worked fine. There are worse things to be than enthusiastic. You just let it carry you into not reading the room, which is something you can recover from, for sure.

[It's not that the mistake wasn't real, but it's one Cosima finds easier to sympathize with than some others. She'd rather a new rifter be genuinely interested in the Gallows than pretend this world somehow didn't matter.]

I'm sorry you were sick. Are you doing better, now?

( Physical difficulty isn't something she's experienced personally. Empathy and concern for others, though, she has in spades. Right now the most difficult thing she has to deal with is being self-conscious.

Or-- the most difficult things she'll acknowledge to herself, even if it becomes painfully apparent. And speaking of "apparent": Abella chuckles quietly, though it has an edge of "tell me about it" rather than mirth. It's not unkind, just... tell me about it. )

I thought my world had no magic. A few days ago I found out that was not the case and... I became an engineer because I like the logic of it. There are rules of physics and practical realities, you can troubleshoot why a mechanism isn't working or predict where a project will have flaws and weaknesses. And then you have a weird, magical dream and it turns out Old Gods and magic are real, and then you have another magical dream and fall into a whole new world, and I don't even know enough about the magic at home to know if any of the magic here follows the same laws.

( She laughs again, and while there's some amusement to it, it's not like the overwhelm or the note of sadness in her voice are hard to identify. )

At least if I could figure that out I could find the logic.

Fully cured now, thanks. Long story, but maybe I'll tell it to you over a glass of something strong one day, if you're interested.

But yeah. I get that. My dad was [is? complicated, we'll skip it] a robotics professor, and the last head of research here was ... shit, Tony would be so irritated, I don't actually remember what his degree was in. But he was an inventor, lots of solving problems through blueprints and iterations. It's not my lane, but I get the appeal.

But hey, at least you're not working against your instincts when it comes to magic. We've got a few rifters who could do magic where they're from, and it seems like the translation can be its own headache sometimes. And magic's got a connection to dreams here too, so you're already primed for that, which is a plus.

I'd love to hear it, if you're happy to tell it.

( and she would love something to drink. Drinking and indulgences, fun as they might be, are rocketed (pun intended) from her mind as Cosima continues. A father in robotics, a prior rifter who was an inventor! Ah! )

You father is in Robotics? That's fascinating, I'd do anything to talk to him about it! I can't think of a single university that would even offer a class in such a thing. Some have New Sciences, Computing, but Robotics!

( Yes, no, it's time to repress all that stuff about magic because magic is complicated, and she really wishes she could just say "It's bad!" and leave it at that, but she can't. So let's just hone in on the Science. )

Are you in the Sciences as well? Or are your research specialties from another field completely?

No, yeah, I'm a biologist. With sort of an unanticipated specialty in the Fade's affect on living organisms here in Thedas, but back home I was in evolutionary developmental biology. Most of what I worked on there isn't really possible with the tools I've got here, but you know, now that I'm the head of the Research division a huge chunk of my day is paperwork anyhow. [It sounds like she's smiling, at least partially joking.] That part feels familiar at least. Writing memos to explain why we need certain materials and how we're going to secure funding.

crystal

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what a fuckin nerd

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