[meme] test drive

[citycouncil]

November Test Drive is here!

Tag into this post with characters you're thinking of apping to the game (characters who are not currently in-game or currently reserved by someone else). It can be just a tag, a brief EP, whatever you want. You can be new to the game, or simply want to test out a fresh pup. Tag each other with these characters or those already in game, and have fun.

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[nevegallus]

"I learned a long time ago that nothing is impossible, even if it feels like it should be," she agrees. Even elven gods. She'd fought hard to find other answers for the things Varric had told her — for the things Aelia had been doing to her city, for Solas's power and Rook's— well. Sometimes the answers lie in what once seemed impossible. It isn't the easy path, but it's the right one.

They walk by ugly, gleaming carriages and people dressed similarly to and simpler than the man walking beside her. They walk by cramped buildings that would remind her of Dock Town if it weren't for the perfectly straight grid of streets and lack of sprawling market and sprawled out homeless.

"This city's on the coast," she says, though from where they stand, she can't see an ocean; she can smell it, though, clear as if she were in Dock Town now. "Has anyone tried leaving by boat?"

[ssrsousa]

“They have. They just loop around and end up coming back to the beach. Same as if you try to take any of the roads out of here. Someone even tried flying out of here. Same thing. Whatever’s keeping us here, it’s creative.”

He was personally okay with that creativity, but that was a very specific situation.

[nevegallus]

Neve files that away. Whatever is behind this, it's either older than even the elven gods — old enough to have learned or remembered how to change — or much, much younger.

"You don't seem to mind," she notes, gesturing vaguely at him to indicate his entire demeanor.

[ssrsousa]

Daniel shrugged. “Every place has its benefits and its drawbacks. This one’s not too bad for me, so I’m not fighting to get outta here. I respect that people do, though. It’s worse for them, and they oughta be able to go home if they want to.”

It was much more than not bad for him, but he wasn’t going to tell someone he’d just met about Tom. He could mention the prosthetic, though. She clearly had one of her own.

[nevegallus]

"I suppose I can't argue with that," she says. "The freedom to come and go also means the freedom to stay, after all. It's the lack of choice that bothers me most of all." She frowns just a little, glancing over at him. "You won't be offended when I inevitably test each of these revelations," she deduces.

[ssrsousa]

"Why would I be?" he replied. "You just met me. I've got one of those faces, but that doesn't mean I'm actually trustworthy."

He was, but he also had one of those faces. He'd been told that several times.

[nevegallus]

"Self-aware," she notes. "I like it." The lack of offense is a welcome surprise. She suspects he's a Templar, or something like it. Maybe even a detective like herself: someone who's used to other people's skepticism, their mistrust. Someone who is, perhaps, used to earning that trust.

"Have you been here long?" she asks next, stopping at a lighted sign with a large, simple hand on it as those garish metal carriages roll by. It doesn't take a genius to understand the hand is saying 'stop there,' even if she's never seen something like it in Tevinter.

[ssrsousa]

"Almost eight years," Daniel said readily. Everyone asked that question of each other, right after they established where everyone had come from and when.

"I arrived from a planet called Earth, and by my calendar it was 1955. That means almost nothing to anyone else, but that's what it is."

1946 or 1955, either one meant nothing and he remembered 1955, so he'd started saying 1955.

[nevegallus]

"It means almost nothing to me," Neve confirms plainly, "except that now I know for certain you're not from anywhere I've heard of." Since he told her his, she explains, "I'm from Tevinter, on the continent of Thedas, and by my calendar, it's 9:52 Dragon. Well, I suppose technically by my calendar, it's 2046, but I've gotten used to talking to people from the south." The lighted hand turns into a lighted walking figure, and Neve steps down from the curb and strides confidently across the painted lines marking the way. "I expect that means as little to you as your calendar does to me," she adds without a hint of offense.

[ssrsousa]

"Twenty forty-six sounds like you're a century in my future and that I should ask you about flying cars," he replied easily. He kept pace with her as they walked across the street and then he motioned that they needed to go left, since they were heading to the train station.

[nevegallus]

She turns easily, pivoting on her left foot instead of her right; her boot has a similar embellished hook in the toe as her prosthetic, but the fine leather makes much less noise on the sidewalk.

"Can't say what a car is, let alone if it can fly," she says, not sounding particularly apologetic.

[ssrsousa]

Daniel motioned to the cars driving down the road next to them.

"Those are cars. When they were invented, they were called horseless carriages, which kind of makes sense considering how they look."

Some of them were less like carriages than others, but they were all horseless carriages.

[nevegallus]

"They're hideous," Neve says honestly, but she offers Daniel another lopsided smirk. "No offense. Is that how your scholars imagined your future? Flying cars and, what, no more roads?" She gestures shallowly towards the road they walk parallel to now, then clasps her hands in front of herself. "Seems far-fetched."

[ssrsousa]

Daniel chuckled when she said the cars were hideous. He didn't think they were, but he didn't think they were pretty either. They were functional, and that was about all they were.

"Yeah, that was pretty much the idea. Maybe not the scholars, but definitely the people who wrote books with stories that were imagining the future."

[nevegallus]

"Well, everyone likes their stories," she points out. She thinks of Bellara, the serials in the Tevinter papers that she so enjoys. For a fraction of a moment, blink and you miss it, her eyebrows pull into a sad arc. If what Daniel Sousa is saying is true, then she may never see Bel again.

She rubs her knuckles with her thumb, like she can smooth her worries away like lotion.

"I suppose with the right enchantment it could be done," she says, returning to the flying cars.