Not that I've seen, but there are inks that can fake it credibly for several weeks as long as you don't scrub too hard.
[ But she dismisses the idea with another gesture, this one a more definite swipe of her hand. ] I shouldn't have suggested it; I'm not getting a tattoo for Riftwatch after refusing real ones for so many years.
I've thought about it for aesthetic purposes, but given the preexisting ones [and, presumably, the anchor shard and the execrable attempts at lying under pressure that Yseult herself has witnessed] it's not like I'm suited for undercover work anyway.
Alright. I'll talk to Viktor and keep you in the loop. Let me know if Isaac responds to your feedback, I guess.
[She tugs her right sleeve up, revealing the full design on her forearm.]
So this is an animal shell, it's a creature from home called a nautilus. Maybe they exist in Thedas, I guess I wouldn't know. But the spiral of its shell ... you can describe that mathematically. We call it the Golden Ratio, but that I'm sure must exist here, even if it has another name. But it's this pattern that just repeats itself in nature, in the way flowers arrange their petals and like, how bees build their hives. Tons of stuff. And it's just ... I don't know, I love the symmetry and beauty of it.
I'd want to understand nature even if it wasn't beautiful to our eyes, but it is, and I wanted a connection to that for my second piece.
[ Yseult leans onto the desk to look more closely at the design as Cosima answers. A glance up at 'describe that mathematically'--a topic maybe even further out of her wheelhouse than memory magic--but patterns in nature she can grasp, and symmetry and beauty. ]
I've seen shells this shape. [ she swirls a finger in the air above Cosima's forearm ] Small ones. The way it fades into something like a painting is lovely.
[ She gives it another beat of observation before biting at the dangling hook. ] What was your first?
[She pulls up her left sleeves this time. The tattoo is farther up, not likely to peek out under a sleeve like the shell design. A simple black silhouette of a dandelion in seed is nearly at the crook of her elbow, with a few of the seeds trailing, as if someone had blown them down her arm toward her wrist.]
I wish this one had a great story, but I was a teenager and I thought it was pretty. I mean, I still think it's pretty, no regrets, but no deeply symbolic meaning in mind when I picked it, either. My mom made a face at me, but my dad paid for it, so I don't think it even counts as an act of rebellion.
[The suggestion about her father gets a genuine smile in turn, suggesting this isn't totally off-base.]
Hey, dares are a great traditional reason for tattoos. But if you're in a position one day where they're not a hindrance to your work ... I don't know. I guess it always felt like a way to affirm my bod is mine. To do things just because I want to.
[Which, on a less pleasant note:]
Speaking of, or not really, but ... I've been purposely private with my thoughts about anchor removal, but we may be reaching a point where that's not tenable. [Given the Ness of it all.] But I just wanted to say: Other div heads will know first. If I change my mind about saying something more publicly than I have. Don't want to blindside you.
[ Yseult's first nod is slow and shallow, understanding and--if not quite agreement, the sense that it's an idea she's turning over. It's not difficult to imagine the idea might be a complicated one for a woman in her line of work.
Voluntary amputations are another matter. This nod is brisk. ]
The warning is appreciated. Do you have a sense of what you might say?
Still workshopping that. My personal position hasn't changed; I think I'm more useful with both arms. Yeah, I could vanish again, but I could also get shot with an arrow the next time the Venatori attack. Or I could catch a particularly nasty flu, who knows. The anchor's a risk, but we all run a lot of those. If the war ends and I'm still here, maybe I'll revisit the question, but that's a lot of bridges to cross.
But for everyone else... I'm not comfortable telling people they can or can't make that decision. It's their own life. But I'm, uh, let's go with "alarmed" that Ness felt she had to make it look like an accident. Doing it that way added risk that I don't think was actually necessary. And her complications also illustrate that removing the arm puts you at risk too, if not the same way that keeping it does.
All that said, I don't want to like, single Ness out. People who knew Wysteria know how breezy she could be about risk, and how hard Tony leaving hit her. But if people are coming along later and reading her notes, they may not have that context.
Wysteria's anchor had also progressed to a point that was causing harm, or so the report suggested. [ speaking of context. ] That anchors remain the only method of closing rifts and rifters still more common than natives with anchors is also a factor. It's a rare and powerful ability that's being given up.
[ There's a pause, revealed in the subtle shifting of her jaw and press of her mouth after a second as a moment of hesitation, before Yseult decides to be completely frank. ]
Other than rare exceptions, removing the anchor is a selfish choice. It's personal stability over an essential tool we can't create more of. We can't stop them and they won't want to hear it, but they should think about that. The idea of vanishing one day may be terrible but everyone here is risking the same.
Look, my threshold for forbidding it is high. Higher than "I think it's selfish to do what you're doing," though I agree with you that it is that. But I also haven't spoken up before now because I know my position carries weight. Because I didn't want exactly the kind of "accidents" we've just seen as a workaround. I wondered if discouragement would read as prohibition in a way that caused more problems. I think that math has shifted, considering.
Ironically, same reason as mine: Didn't want to set an example. Tried to talk her out of that, but I wasn't willing to blow up her spot among more than the div heads and short of an order she wasn't listening. Not that it mattered in the end, I don't know that anyone bought that it was an accident, especially. I should have ... well. If wishes were horses, as we said back home.
She sounds strangely intent on discarding an arm for someone who hasn't been here very long. [ compared to, say, the folks with years' long relationships at risk. ]
Yeah. I don't know her well enough to be sure whether it's a particular terror of vanishing separate from dying some other way, or a misguided way to show commitment to Riftwatch. Or maybe a third thing, always possible, but those are my two best guesses.
Before it happened, she wouldn't have been my bet.
Fuck, yeah, she was totally who I was going to put my money on. Guess no one would take the bet.
It is a little sobering to essentially be told something that's happened to me personally is a fate worse than death, but I don't know, maybe I just need two girlfriends who are taller than me to pose dramatically with.
Yeah, I plan to. I am in something of a limited club, having that experience.
I should probably think of something a bit more diplomatic than "I didn't believe in an afterlife for my individual consciousness to begin with, so oblivion was always my expectation," though. Not quite rallying the troops material.
[Her smile lingers, genuine at that laugh but fading to something a bit more abstracted with the question.]
For me it was like ... I went to bed here, the way I always did. And then I was coming through a rift again with about a year's worth of new memories from home. There was no. [She pauses to think.] When you're asleep, you sort of have a sense in your body that time has passed, right? Even if you don't remember any dreams, it feels like you were out for some amount of time, even if you don't instantly know how much.
It wasn't like that. It felt subjectively like I'd jumped forward in time, just abruptly. Really disorienting, though I imagine maybe worse if I didn't have any new home memories. It was weird enough the mismatch of like ... it felt like a year of life where I'm from, but it was longer than that here, that I was gone. But even then, it was and wasn't like all that happened to me, since I suddenly got my Thedas memories back too.
[Granitefell is its own set of complications, but it's not a comparison without some merit.]
I know it freaks out some of the other rifters when I talk about it, but I think the whole experience really solidified my feelings that I'm a different person than the Cosima back on Earth whose memories I have. She doesn't remember being to Thedas because she never has been. I ... remember her not remembering, if that makes sense.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[ But she dismisses the idea with another gesture, this one a more definite swipe of her hand. ] I shouldn't have suggested it; I'm not getting a tattoo for Riftwatch after refusing real ones for so many years.
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Alright. I'll talk to Viktor and keep you in the loop. Let me know if Isaac responds to your feedback, I guess.
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Very well. [ but doesn't immediately rise. She flicks a glance instead to the sliver of ink visible below Cosima's sleeve. ]
Can I ask the significance of that one?
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[She tugs her right sleeve up, revealing the full design on her forearm.]
So this is an animal shell, it's a creature from home called a nautilus. Maybe they exist in Thedas, I guess I wouldn't know. But the spiral of its shell ... you can describe that mathematically. We call it the Golden Ratio, but that I'm sure must exist here, even if it has another name. But it's this pattern that just repeats itself in nature, in the way flowers arrange their petals and like, how bees build their hives. Tons of stuff. And it's just ... I don't know, I love the symmetry and beauty of it.
I'd want to understand nature even if it wasn't beautiful to our eyes, but it is, and I wanted a connection to that for my second piece.
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I've seen shells this shape. [ she swirls a finger in the air above Cosima's forearm ] Small ones. The way it fades into something like a painting is lovely.
[ She gives it another beat of observation before biting at the dangling hook. ] What was your first?
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I wish this one had a great story, but I was a teenager and I thought it was pretty. I mean, I still think it's pretty, no regrets, but no deeply symbolic meaning in mind when I picked it, either. My mom made a face at me, but my dad paid for it, so I don't think it even counts as an act of rebellion.
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Darras's were all gotten on a whim or a dare I think, and they are less pretty than this. One day, perhaps. When I've retired.
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Hey, dares are a great traditional reason for tattoos. But if you're in a position one day where they're not a hindrance to your work ... I don't know. I guess it always felt like a way to affirm my bod is mine. To do things just because I want to.
[Which, on a less pleasant note:]
Speaking of, or not really, but ... I've been purposely private with my thoughts about anchor removal, but we may be reaching a point where that's not tenable. [Given the Ness of it all.] But I just wanted to say: Other div heads will know first. If I change my mind about saying something more publicly than I have. Don't want to blindside you.
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Voluntary amputations are another matter. This nod is brisk. ]
The warning is appreciated. Do you have a sense of what you might say?
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But for everyone else... I'm not comfortable telling people they can or can't make that decision. It's their own life. But I'm, uh, let's go with "alarmed" that Ness felt she had to make it look like an accident. Doing it that way added risk that I don't think was actually necessary. And her complications also illustrate that removing the arm puts you at risk too, if not the same way that keeping it does.
All that said, I don't want to like, single Ness out. People who knew Wysteria know how breezy she could be about risk, and how hard Tony leaving hit her. But if people are coming along later and reading her notes, they may not have that context.
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[ There's a pause, revealed in the subtle shifting of her jaw and press of her mouth after a second as a moment of hesitation, before Yseult decides to be completely frank. ]
Other than rare exceptions, removing the anchor is a selfish choice. It's personal stability over an essential tool we can't create more of. We can't stop them and they won't want to hear it, but they should think about that. The idea of vanishing one day may be terrible but everyone here is risking the same.
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[She exhales, a huff of breath.]
Look, my threshold for forbidding it is high. Higher than "I think it's selfish to do what you're doing," though I agree with you that it is that. But I also haven't spoken up before now because I know my position carries weight. Because I didn't want exactly the kind of "accidents" we've just seen as a workaround. I wondered if discouragement would read as prohibition in a way that caused more problems. I think that math has shifted, considering.
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Before it happened, she wouldn't have been my bet.
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Fuck, yeah, she was totally who I was going to put my money on. Guess no one would take the bet.
It is a little sobering to essentially be told something that's happened to me personally is a fate worse than death, but I don't know, maybe I just need two girlfriends who are taller than me to pose dramatically with.
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I imagine that would change anyone's outlook on existence. [ is dry again, before her tone returns to seriousness. ]
You might include that in your statement. It could help to remind people you had that experience.
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I should probably think of something a bit more diplomatic than "I didn't believe in an afterlife for my individual consciousness to begin with, so oblivion was always my expectation," though. Not quite rallying the troops material.
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No, not quite. But they've never seemed a very religious group anyway.
What is it like, to vanish and then return?
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For me it was like ... I went to bed here, the way I always did. And then I was coming through a rift again with about a year's worth of new memories from home. There was no. [She pauses to think.] When you're asleep, you sort of have a sense in your body that time has passed, right? Even if you don't remember any dreams, it feels like you were out for some amount of time, even if you don't instantly know how much.
It wasn't like that. It felt subjectively like I'd jumped forward in time, just abruptly. Really disorienting, though I imagine maybe worse if I didn't have any new home memories. It was weird enough the mismatch of like ... it felt like a year of life where I'm from, but it was longer than that here, that I was gone. But even then, it was and wasn't like all that happened to me, since I suddenly got my Thedas memories back too.
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The new memories sound a bit like after Granitefell. The memories that came after they changed things. They've never felt as real.
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[Granitefell is its own set of complications, but it's not a comparison without some merit.]
I know it freaks out some of the other rifters when I talk about it, but I think the whole experience really solidified my feelings that I'm a different person than the Cosima back on Earth whose memories I have. She doesn't remember being to Thedas because she never has been. I ... remember her not remembering, if that makes sense.