CRYSTALS | Open

[aestivation]

FORM: crystal
SENDER: ya boy
RECIPIENT: all of you
WHAT: is your sending crystal running you better go catch it
WHEN: vaguely Post-Island
WHERE: kirkwall
NOTES: i'm cool with transitioning this into a mini-log if anyone actually wants to go look!

A sending crystal is missing from the storerooms.

[ the inflection's shallow, and oddly-placed — as though someone speaking across a great, flat distance. ]

The assignment records were last updated three days ago; they don't account for its absence. I've completed a search of the Gallows towers, excluding restricted and residential areas.

[ not for lack of trying. no one spoke of privacy before the rebellion. ]

I’d ask your escort through these, or barring this, that you keep an eye open within any shared living quarters and workspaces. If you've information to contribute, please inform Casimir Lyov, in Research.

I am, [ a pause. ] distinctive.

Comments

[galvanising]

Casimir? You sound different.

[ so does she, but, you know. not nearly as much. ]

[aestivation]

[ it takes him a while to find the memory of her voice (or what that voice might have become) ]

Nell.

[ she hadn’t been nellie for years before he’d left. even so, the second syllable cloys, hangs uncertain at the end of the thought.

he doesn’t bother to set the channel private. it doesn't occur to do so. but he does switch abruptly to nevarran, because that's how they'd always spoken before. ]

I missed you. [ he clarifies — ] Some time ago; I wrote it down.

[ he’s paged through them: inky little admissions of guilt, of pangs for home, of worries for the future; the shape of symbols he’s forgotten how to read. her name had appeared.

he hasn’t missed her in years, whether nellie or nell. but he must have, at one point. for whatever missing means. ]

[galvanising]

[ nell isn't often at a loss for words. not anymore, not since she stopped being nellie and stopped tripping over her own tongue when forced into nevarran.

but that's a lot all at once, right there, packed into ten little words. nevarran may be second-nature now, but the language she needs for this, that still isn't. it takes her a few minutes.

tightly: ] When did they do this to you?

[aestivation]

[ he recognizes it, that particular pattern of vocal tension that accompanies outrage. hasn't heard it in a while now, let alone from her mouth. it's the last thing that he remembers hearing from her mouth.

there's so much that it could be about. she was angry with him, before he left — might still be now. he can only account for his own time, ]

I was asked to oversee communications inventory yesterday. [ he offers. better more information than less when the question's unclear. ] It has been near two weeks since I arrived with the Inquisition. I received Tranquility five years ago.

[ shortly after kirkwall. and that's — all of it, he thinks. all that she might need to know of; the rest isn't pertinent. ]

my terrible interim icons are not up to this challenge

[galvanising]

Received!

[ a short, harsh laugh, the kind that scrapes a closing a throat on its way out. it's almost ironic, the overwhelming rush of feeling. unseen, she grips the edge of a table, breathes in sharp, shallow breaths. it doesn't help. ]

You've been harrowed. They can't just-- Maker's fucking--!

[ the transmission cuts off abruptly, only the first faint crunch of something being smashed audible before it's silent. ]

[aestivation]

[ well that's —

potentially one fewer crystal to account for. he can confirm it later; perhaps she'll have quieted by then.

(he'd sooner not be about broken things.) ]

[galvanising]

[ well TOO BAD here's one now ]

Why are you telling people that you chose this?

[aestivation]

[ patiently (as though he might be anything else), ]

I was presented with options, and took one.

[ do u want him 2 get a dictionary ]