jaskoleczka | { pfsb } a test

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{ pfsb } a test

Avallac'h was meant to follow me, but something went awry...

It's a quiet night, and the Scottish skies at the end of the universe are filled with to the brim with soft gray clouds. The waters of the little inlet and around the lake lap lazily at the shore. Deep in the lake, the giant squid cruises idly for food, trailing its tentacles like smoke through the water. In the stables, the horses whicker quietly to each other. All is peaceful, and perfect.

Until some of those soft, contented sounds turn sharp, and anxious. Wood rattles as nervous horses begin pawing and kicking at their stalls, tossing their heads, wide-eyed and alarmed.

And then a flash of light splits the clouds with a horrible sound as of a great deal of air being displaced all at once, and then: nothing.

The horses calm. And somewhere, far out in the lake, there is a splash.

***

Ciri surfaces with a splutter and gasps for air as she turns her head, taking stock of the situation.

This is...not Velen. At least, it's nowhere in Velen she recognizes. "Avallac'h?" she calls, her voice echoing strangely over the water, but just inflating her ribcage to project her voice has her wincing. The water is too dark to see through, but she knows what she would find if she could: a faint dark cloud that is seeping from the wound in her side and the tear in her shirt.

"Wonderful," she says to herself, and eyes the distance to shore. It isn't far – fifty yards, perhaps – but she's exhausted from the ambush, the flight, the portal, and she's already lost a lot of blood.

But there's nothing for it: she grits her teeth and strikes out for shore, hoping against hope that this lake is not home to drowners...or worse.

In the end, she almost makes it. There's the shore, only twenty yards, ten. A few feet. Everything goes black, and when she comes to, she's washed onto a sandy beach that makes no sense with the cold lake water she's just escaped – but that's all she has time to determine before exhaustion and pain told firm hold of her reins, and she collapses into a heap on the shore at the end of the universe.

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Ah.

"If you do not see a door," he says, very steadily, "there are two possible reasons for that."

"One is that the powers which run the inn have decided it is your fortune to remain here for a time."

"The other--"

Is far worse, of course.

"-- I am sorry. I must ask you a difficult question."

"Ask," says Ciri; no stranger to difficult questions she. She tears her eyes away from the wall with no door and tamps down hard on the panic beginning to push adrenaline through her system.

"I will not hold it against you."

Very gently, he asks,

"Is there a chance that you could have died in the fall from what you were fleeing?"

"Died?"

Startled, she looks again at the occupants of the room around them. They all look hale enough, but...

Eredin. The Hunt. Fleeing for the portal. A flash of light.

She shakes her head. "How would I be able to tell?"

"If you do not know--"

He looks around, but does not see either Wei Ying or Harrow, the two who would be most likely to be able to discern the truth.

"-- the healers here might be able to tell."

"Right, then," she sighs. "A healer it is."

She doesn't understand how she could be hungry or thirsty if she's – but Lan Wangji hadn't mentioned it as a way to tell, so perhaps the ghosts inhabiting (haunting?) this place look and act just as if they were still alive.

The waitrat has come with her food; she picks at a piece of cheese, moodily, and presses a hand to her side to see how her wound is feeling.

(Still sore. Very. It will probably need stitches.) "Is there one nearby you could direct me to?"

"After you eat," he suggests. "I will explain, while you do."

"My--"

How to explain Wei Ying to someone who does not know him, and all that they are to each other?"

"--dearest friend," he settles on, for now, "Is here. And is dead. But in all ways appears as one living. It is something in the nature of the inn."

She offers him a tight but grateful smile, and digs into her bread and cheese, washes it down with soup and ale as he talks. None of it is completely familiar, but it's all very good: the soup is more like a stew, thick with meat and vegetables in a savory broth; the cheese is pale and creamy and the bread crackles as she breaks off sections.

"I'm sorry," she says, genuinely sympathetic. "It must be good to be able to spend time with him again. I would never have believed it possible, but then it seems the strangest things are."

Edited 2020-11-02 19:35 (UTC)

"It is," he says, simply.

"And yes. Here, more than most places."

She thinks of Geralt and Yennefer, left on the shores of Avalon, and forces a smile.

"Are there many people here like your friend?" she asks, tearing the last part of the bread in two and using it to sop up the stew.

"Who have died? So I am told."

He is just glad that none of them seem to be inclined toward becoming fierce corpses or angry ghosts in the inn itself, although the grounds are a different matter.

"Enough so that it is seen as commonplace."

She shakes her head in disbelief. "Strange indeed."

She has eaten perhaps a third of the stew and cheese and most of the bread, and the ale is cold and bitter against her throat, but it's hard to enjoy when a rapidly-approaching appointment with a healer might turn her whole world upside-down. She sighs and pushes the dishes away, appetite gone.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I don't think I can eat another bite until I know for certain if I...what I am."

He nods, and stands.

"I will take you to the healers."

He had made a point to find out their location, after what had happened before.

"Follow me."

She pushes herself up a little stiffly, but pride and determination keep her back straight and her head up as she nods to him.

"Thank you, Lan Wangji. I feel I'm going to owe quite a lot to you tonight."

"You are welcome. But you do not owe me anything."

He bends down to one of the rats and requests that it keep an eye on Ciri's meal, then leads the way across the room to the hallway, and the infirmary beyond.

With relief, he sees that someone he knows is looking after things at present.

"Ford-daifu." He bows, then steps aside for Ciri to enter. "We have need of your assistance, if you do not mind."

This time, at least, Kim Ford doesn't jump nearly out of her skin.

"Lan Wangji! Oh, it's good to see you - and see you well," she adds, with a cheerful smile.

Kim shoves a lock of white hair behind her ear and looks back and forth between them.

"How can I help?"

The woman Lan Wangji brought her to looks only a few years older than Ciri herself, but that isn't why a slight, nostalgic smile touches her lips.

The woman's hair is pure white. And Ciri only knows one other person with that particular defining characteristic.

It isn't enough of a foundation to build an immediate connection, but it certainly helps. "My name is Ciri," she says, moving forward. Though she holds herself straight, she's favoring her left side, and her shirt there is torn and splattered with blood. "Lan Wangji said...you could help me."

"She fell," he adds, succinctly. "From the sky. She is injured."

For all that his speech is brief, there is nothing in his demeanor that indicates anything but respect.

"We also ... do not know," he adds. "If her fall was -- if she died, in it. And are hoping that you can tell."

She nods to Ciri first, then continues nodding along as he speaks, clearly categorizing what needs to happen next, until he reaches the end of his summation.

Clear gray eyes widen rather a lot.

"Weaver at the Loom," she says, and shoves her hair back again. "Okay. Okay. First things first."

Brisk and practical, she points at one of the patient beds.

"Ciri, it's nice to meet you. Please sit there while I get a few things, and I'll take a look at you. Is there anything else I need to know, about your fall or what caused it?"

She glances at Lan Wangji for confirmation, then makes her way to sit on the indicated bed. "I came through a portal," she says, voice soft. "My...friend was meant to follow me. I don't know what happened to him. We were attacked."

Her hand goes to her side. "We fled, but not fast enough. I think he was cursed...He opened the portal, and I flung myself through it. It was meant to bring me to another place on the Continent – in my own world, I mean."

Her voice turns wry. "I'm not very skilled at controlling travel through worlds. At least I fell in a lake, and not off a mountaintop."

He takes up a position at the end of the bed, standing perfectly straight in his habitual posture, with one hand at his side and the other resting in a loose fist at the small of his back.

He would offer to leave to give Ciri privacy, but she is very new at this inn and he is a familiar face, at least a little. He also knows very well how difficult it can be to let yourself be vulnerable to a doctor's ministrations, no matter how well-intentioned.

"Did the curse strike you, too?"

She wheels over a metal table, on which she's set the supplies she's most likely to need, unhooks her stethoscope, and holds up a thermometer.

"If it did, we'll deal with that in a moment," she says, practically. "First I'd like to take some basic vitals - listen to your heart and breathing with this," she explains, holding up the stethoscope, "and see if you have any fever - and then we'll take a look at your side."

She gives Lan Wangji a quick grin, and turns back to reassure Ciri,

"He can tell you how this part all works, if you haven't seen the tools I use before. Lots of people haven't."

"I don't think so," she tells Lan Wangji. "And believe me, I would have felt it if it had."

The Wild Hunt are not known for gentleness or restraint.

She watches Dr. Ford with calm interest: the instruments aren't unlike some she's seen in other worlds. "Not these exactly," she admits, "but something like them, I think."

He makes a noise of assent, and otherwise stays quiet, ready to assist if needed.

"Okay then."

She hands over the thermometer. "In your mouth, under your tongue, and I'll take a listen."

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