redshiftlogs | [OPEN]

Who: Julie & OPEN
What: Zombies, farming and getting really, really drunk
When: Septemberish
Where: noted in-post
Warnings: none yet
Format: Prefer brackets but will match.

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i. way too much like home | SEPT. 01. | "Whole Foods"

[How can someone used to foraging and scavenging for anything they might find useful turn down a massive supermarket right on their doorstep? Julie... could, and probably ought to, but curiosity is a frequent silencer of good reason and Julie finds herself sneaking into the place with the kind of inevitability that even someone who barely knows her has probably come to expect.

And she's been through this enough now to realise that this entire place probably got here in a similar way to how they did. She knows that, and she knows she might just find something here that could be better than what they have in Anchor.

She might find something worse, too... but such are the risks we take.

In an old, worn-in habit she grabs a basket on her way in, hooking it over her arm. The radiation suit she opted to wear makes it harder to see what might be around each corner, and she pauses at each to check what might be there. Over time, she relaxes, and spends more time perusing the shelves than she does checking for danger.

That's when she spots it. Out of the corner of her eye at first, and initially she thinks it's just someone from Anchor who made their way over here to join her, but... no. There's something wrong. Something about the way it's moving.]

Uh--... [Oh, shit.

She drops her basket with a noisy clatter and starts to run before she even finishes the thought, completely unaware that she isn't being followed with even half the speed that she's moving at.

Zombies! Why is it always fucking zombies!]

((open to her being found at any point in the post))

ii. that farming life | Agriculture Level

[In the upper level of the agriculture area, Julie is sitting on the ground with a small blanket spread out in front of her, carefully sorting through a selection of seeds. Now and then, she finds one that's dried out or showing a hint of rot, and puts it aside.

It's a little like being back home. The planting, the farming... but there's a lot less of them here, and a lot more food to go around. It would be nice, if she didn't just want to go home. But then... there's a lot she'd miss if she went home, too.

Julie tilts her head back, looking up towards the roof and the light streaming in from above her.]

Places like this suck. [She mutters to herself.] Never as easy as just taking the first opportunity to get the hell out of dodge.

[She'd second-guess it now, after so long. It's not fair.

The seeds get her attention once again. Something simple, easy to focus on. She tosses another dud aside.] At least I've got you to keep me busy.

iii. just another tequila sunrise | Bar

[Farming only keeps a person busy for so many hours of the day, and there are only so many times you can go to the spa for a hot soak before it feels like you're just wasting time.

Some people would say that being in the bar getting drunk by yourself isn't a good way to pass the time in any respect, but to those people, Julie really only has one thing to say. It isn't something that can be repeated in polite company.

She's four tequila sunrises in by the time anyone finds her, and is making a move to get behind the bar to make something that isn't a tequila sunrise.]

God-- fucking damn it, I know you have something back here that isn't tequila or fucking grenadine. [The bartender bot, being in no position to really do anything about it, just watches her while she lifts a half-dozen bottles up onto the bar.]

If I ever see another tequila sunrise when I get out of here...

[Much later, when she's been successful in her search and is no longer really capable of getting to the bar, she sits at a table nursing what's left of a bottle of flavoured gin and staring glassy-eyed at the other side of the room.]

It's not fair. [She says out loud, to anyone who might be listening. What's not fair? A lot of things, probably.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh. Huh. That sounds useful."

And it's a distraction. Something to think about other than the thoughts currently pulling her into the bottom of a literal bottle. She props her chin up on her hand and looks at Cole curiously.

"Where did you come from?"

"Thedas. The Fade. Near the Frostback Mountains. The White Spire. Skyhold. Drift Fleet." All places he could be said to come from. He watches the bottles, flickers of memories and the crackle of the Red Shift clinging to them.

"Not an Earth."

At least he's holding her attention. As someone who has been to way too many places, she can sympathise with the constant moving around. Even the being in other worlds part.

"Huh," she muses, picking at a chip in the table surface. "Okay, start with the first one. What's Thedas like?"

"Not like Earth." It's the easiest explanation, but he reaches a bit further into her mind to find references. "The technology is not as advanced, but there's magic. Thedas is what the mortals call their known world."

"Oh. Cool."

'Thedas'. It's tucked away for future reference, and it does strike her that so many people come from worlds that have more interesting names than 'Earth'. Ancient humans were sure not creative when it came to naming what they lived on.

"What kind of magic?"

She's interested in the magic. Her world doesn't have magic, unless you count the Cure and the Gleam, which she hasn't really considered being magic.

If Cole was the original Cole, he might understand more about magic. He would've been taught and told, maybe by the Circle, or maybe he would've fled to the Frostbacks, to his mother's people to learn their ways.

But he isn't. And he knows what Cole did, but but Compassion does more. "Magic in Thedas comes from the Fade. Magic, dreams, it's all the Fade. And spirits are in the Fade. Most mages call on the Fade to make magic happen. Some, just some, call channel the power from spirits directly. It's more powerful, usually, but they consider it more dangerous. Risky."

"The Fade, huh. Sounds magical."

She mulls it over again, letting her slow thoughts turn and absorb the new information. That magic exists isn't strange to her, now. No stranger than the idea that other universes and other worlds exist, or that aliens and people who aren't human at all exist...

"Wonder if things would have been different back home if there was magic... or if it would have just made things worse." Julie snorts softly to herself. "I mean, humans'll use anything they can to blow each other up."

"Not better. Not worse. Just different." That's his assessment on a lot of things. They would simply be very different.

"Mortals fight. And love. Have passions. It's what they are."

She goes a bit quiet at that. Her lips press together, thoughts crowd in that she steadfastly pushes back and closes the door on, and she shakes her head.

"Sometimes I think that's what started it. The Dead, back home, they don't... have any passions. And sometimes the Living are almost the same, just... walking around waiting for the final push."

Like her dad. Julie makes a face at the table and shakes her head again, her blonde hair bouncing lightly across her shoulders.

"Sorry. You're just really easy to talk to."

"Sometimes people are trying so hard to survive that they don't have space to live. And when they do, they've forgotten how."

Cole remembers that feeling, pressing around him in the stone walls of White Spire.

"I like listening. Especially if it helps." He glances at her and gives a small, tight smile.

"You remind me of someone," she tells him, with a small smile of her own. R, the zombie, who had rescued her. Who had tried to smile at her while he listened to her talk about anything and everything. Who had risked his life to follow her home and who had stuck by her through so much...

And those thoughts, along with how drunk she is, don't make for a particularly happy combination. Every time she thinks about him, she can't help but feel guilty.

"Ah, shit."

"I know I do."

He knows he's not meant to talk spoilers, what he sees and senses, but she's sad and very drunk. "I believe happy endings happen. Even for you."

[OPEN]

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