[🌿 OPEN 🌿] I feel the fire flare alight inside me

WHO: Cassandra de Rolo (

ofwovenstone) and OPEN
WHEN: very end bit of July and August
WHAT: Stuff! Things! ~~Laying the groundwork for a plotlet.~~
WHERE: All over the place in and around Gazin and the nearby forest
WARNINGS: None to start, probably. Save maybe the usual warnings that naturally come with a de Rolo. Because nightmares.
NOTES: Any prompts involving the use of her powers are reserved for her existing CR. Other than that, feel free to find her just about anywhere, exploring and observing and drawing and getting into trouble (attacked by bandits, creatures, go wild!).

Cassandra’s finding herself itching with inactivity. Her... pseudo-employment with the herbarium and the apothecary does keep her a little busy, as well as her delving into studying and learning about the world she’s found herself in and the creatures that live there (and the magic that exists). But she’s used to... more. Running a city and then fighting a war. (And the weird chaos interspersed with calm that had been the City.)

Even the drawing and painting and sculpting that she’s doing doesn’t keep her busy enough. Although it’s all a lovely distraction, and her room is slowly being filled with art, as well as a wall-sized map of the city and surrounding areas, with space to expand as she widens her explorations and mapping efforts. She’s waiting to find stone that suits her for her three dimensional rendering. Renderings plural, because she wants to make a small one of Rome. The first place that had felt anything like home in a very long time. That had brought to her friends of her own, for the first time.

Wending her way through the town sometimes helps, stopping by the apothecary and herbarium to deliver baskets of things to them both when she has them (and she does, often), and the market when it’s open. Or poking around the various shops when it’s not. She can be found sitting out of the way somewhere, as well, sketching into her journal. Rarely, she can be found painting.

One thing she does, almost always, no matter what she’s doing or where she is... is listen. Gather information. She’s very skilled at going unnoticed when she chooses to; there are beats to how people watch each other, and if you’re clever enough and you know what it is you’re looking for, you can pass between attention spans. And Cassandra is extremely clever. She’s skilled at hiding in those lapses, even in a bustling town.

And she starts to hear whispers. Rumours. Of someone wanting to get their hands on an Ember Unicorn. It’s not surprising, given the healing properties the unicorn has, among other magical qualities. But it doesn’t sit well with Cassandra. The problem is that despite the whispers there’s no mention of WHO, exactly, it is that’s looking for an Ember Unicorn.

So she starts looking into it, seeking out more sources to see if she can’t narrow it down. While she also searches for Ember Unicorns. If she can find them first... perhaps she can protect them. Keep them safe from those who would capture or kill them.

She finds her fair share of trouble, out in the forest. Half on purpose, because she’s exploring and looking to learn more about the creatures there, half because that just seems to be her luck. But when she’s not dealing with bandits or creatures intent on harming her, she’s putting her powers to work for the apothecary and herbarium, and making friends with the creatures who aren’t. The tree folk she meets on accident, as she has her hands pressed against the bark of a tree that’s been in better shape. She doesn’t know if it was humans or nature that had caused it, and it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that she can help it. So she presses her hands to its bark and focuses, watching as it heals, turning hale and hearty, its leaves vibrant and full once more. It’s only then that she realises that she’d felt footsteps, far too deep and far too sturdy to be anything human. She looks up to find a tree folk gazing down at her.

“Oh,” she breathes softly, offering them a gentle smile. “Hello.”

And when she’s not finding trouble or befriending the forest, she’s practicing with her powers. The ones involving plants and animals come as easily as breathing, anymore, but the ones involving rock and stone and dirt are still getting to that point. So she practices, shaping dirt and stone into any number of things. Once she made a chunk of rock almost twice her height into a statue of James. She all but collapses after, because it’s still exhausting for her, working with that much stone. She manages, after a moment, to turn it into a statue of Geralt, before she’s returning it to its natural shape with a soft laugh.

She has to stay resting against it for a long time after that, before she has energy and strength enough to continue on.

At night, usually, after a very long, very hot bath, she settles herself in the tavern for a meal, and a drink or two. Sitting there long into the night, writing or sketching in her journal.

And some nights, long after she’s retired to her room... come the nightmares. Some are quiet, where she wakes unable to breathe. Others, though, come with screams, as she scrambles backwards until her back hits the wall, hand pressing against a wound on her neck that’s long since healed.

One day, when she’s wandering through the market, a basket of fruit and vegetables in her hand, she finds herself drawn to a shop. She hasn’t thought about it since arriving... but she misses music. She misses being able to play. And there, right there, is an instrument shop. She slips inside, and spends far too long just taking in all the different instruments. She would love to purchase a piano, but it wouldn’t fit very well into her rooms as they are now.

Perhaps if she gets a place of her own, then... Perhaps.

For now, though, she ponders the string instruments. Violin had always been her favourite, and the ones here are just lovely. But then she sees it. An absolutely gorgeous instrument. It’s similar to a violin, but not quite. It has more strings, for one. The shopkeep tells her it’s something called a hardingfele.

She ends up leaving with both a violin and the hardingfele. She’ll need to familiarise herself with it, so she can play it properly. For now, though, she’s going to take her violin into her favourite tavern later in the evening, to sit and drink and get her into playing shape. She tends to the instrument with the ease and familiarity of someone who knows her way around instruments, in between drinks.

She’s enough of a regular here that the bartender (and owner) knows her; they’ve spoken many a night about this and that. Which is why he feels so comfortable gently cajoling her to play a little. She chooses a song that is spirited and lively, perfect for playing a tavern. She plays a song or two more before putting her violin away and taking the drink the bartender pushes at her with a grin and a nod of thanks. She ends up drinking the rest of the night for free. Which is very much worth the playing, alone.

There’s one day, when she stops into the herbarium to visit Wen Qing... only to find that she’s not there. It doesn’t take much asking for her to learn that she’d just... stopped coming to work one day. And the news settles like lead in Cassandra’s stomach. She knows Wen Qing well enough to know that she wouldn’t do such a thing without warning. Without word to her employer.

And this isn’t Cassandra’s first time travelling between worlds. She knows, almost instantly, what this means. Wen Qing is gone. Returned home. And the knowledge hurts. She’d like her. They’d been friends.

And Cassandra doesn’t have a great many friends.

She finds herself falling back into long developed habits, retreating from town and to one of the quiet spots in the woods she’s found. Somewhere she can tend to her emotional wounds out of sight. Or so she thinks.