[meme] test drive

[citycouncil]

A bit late. Sorry, folks!

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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Dragon Age: The Veilguard

[off_tempo]

Bellara Lutare trips and very nearly falls, her foot catching in the gap between paving stones, her attention catching and sticking on the unfamiliar skyline. She throws her hands out to steady herself with a low gasp and comes to a stop, still staring. The architecture here is like nothing she's seen before, and that's just the very beginning of the input threatening to overwhelm her.

"What?" she says finally, soft but sharply enunciated, heedless of the people that are moving around her.

[only_good_teacher]

She's wearing some sort of metal gauntlet, stretched from shoulder to fingers, which is strange enough to catch Tom's eye. It's her remarkable hair, facial tattoos and the long, acutely pointed ears that really capture his attention, though.

He tries not to stare, as a rule: staring often invites people to stare at him, and he's spent so much of his life trying to avoid the attention of strangers out of self-preservation. Robin called it camouflage: his tweed jackets, his smartly parted hair, the thicker-than-strictly-necessary frames on his glasses, all of it was engineered to make himself appear utterly unremarkable, unmemorable and, most importantly, easily overlooked.

Since coming to Darrow, that's changed, of course. It has taken years — every single hour of every single day of the nearly four years he's been here, in fact — and it hasn't been without its obstacles and setbacks. But now, his hair is gently mussed from its perfect part and he's in a simple lightweight jacket over a tee, and sometimes he even holds Daniel's hand in public. Now is not one of those times, as he's alone when he spots the young woman as she trips and nearly falls, and he's just offered a quiet 'Oop' before she catches herself, and that's when he sees the gauntlet and the hair and the ears — and, finally, the look of confusion on her face.

"Ah..." he adds, realizing exactly what he's seeing. "I think I can explain, Miss...?"

[off_tempo]

Bellara blinks up at the human addressing her. Human isn't a very useful identifier, she notes. Everyone she can see is human. It's a little unnerving, but at least this one seems nice.

"Um," she says. "Could you? Explain what, I mean? That is, I do need an explanation, but I want to be sure it's the same thing as whatever you're talking about. Bellara. That's me, I mean. Sorry." She pauses to catch her breath, reaching up with both hands to push strands of loosened hair nervously behind her ears. "There's a lot going on here."

[only_good_teacher]

Tom's seen a lot of students in his day with nervous, hurried speech. This woman knocks them all out of the park. Still, his expression is calm and patient.

"I imagine you're feeling more than a little lost," he begins, offering a reassuring smile. "That's understandable and, perhaps unfortunately, normal. I'm Tom. This city is Darrow, it's, ah... I hesitate to say 'magic'? But that's about as close to the truth as any of us have been able to figure out."

[off_tempo]

"Right. Okay." She nods once, quickly, her expression scrunched up tightly as she tries to sort through the questions clamoring around her head. "Feeling lost, yes. More than a little. But that's normal. Kind of. Where I came from. Things go wrong, you know, people get lost, sometimes you never find them again. But this..." She looks around at the unfamiliar city, the noise of it all. "This is where I ended up. And you were expecting that, which means..." What does it mean.

She looks back at Tom. "This place. Darrow, you said. It's where people end up. There's some kind of draw here, like the magic is sort of funneling in. Or is it active? A spell cast on purpose- that would take so much energy. Where's it coming from?"

She blinks. Tom's staring at her. "Who's 'us'?" she asks a bit sheepishly.

[only_good_teacher]

He can't help but feel a little impressed by how quickly Bellara has made the connection that he'd been preparing to dance his way towards. She's answered her own question neatly, but it's led her to ask a question he can't answer.

He settles for answering the one that he can.

"'Us' is people like you and me, who've found our way here from our own places and times," he says, trying to remember how Daniel had explained it to him, the very first time they'd met. "We're not all from the same places, but somehow, we've all ended up here. For some of us, that's been a tremendous improvement to our lives." There's a brief, sheepish look of his own as he worries he gives too much of himself away, before he adds, "but there are others of us who spend the entire time they're here looking for a way out. And so far, there doesn't seem to be one." He can at least be genuinely sympathetic towards those who want to leave and can't. Darrow has been, more than likely, a lifesaver for Tom, but that doesn't mean everyone loves it.