#stairway to deirdre

[deathduty]

Stairway to Deirdre || Nora & Deirdre

TIMING: Set after A Portrait of Morgan Grey LOCATION: Deirdre & Morgan’s house PARTIES: @fearfordinner & @deathduty CONTENT: Head trauma tw SUMMARY: Nora wants to visit a friend.

Nora’s last conversation with Morgan had gone really well, but it had left Nora with a burning question. What did Morgan’s actual house look like? The answer was. Rich. Nora didn’t know why that surprised her. Other people were rich, she knew. It was easy to assume that most people in White Crest were poor. They just didn’t have the same…. affect of the ‘too rich for their own good’ people she’d grown up around. The front door had been unlocked. Just as Nora had requested, that must mean Morgan was expecting her. A cat ran by Nora, hissing at her before skittering to a different room. A new friend. Nora nodded at the receding cat before starting to slink around the large house. It looked like it could have been on TV. Not Nora’s taste, but if she was to believe the media it was the ideal set up for homes. 

In Nora’s hands objects were picked up and placed back down. Examined and discarded. Everything was returned to the exact place she’d found it a little bit to the left. She thought that would be a funny joke for Morgan to discover later. Done with the first floor Nora finally decided to check out what secrets the second story held. Hopefully she’d get a glimpse of that bone room Morgan had promised. Morgan had a very impressive spiral staircase. Nora slid her hands on the railings as she ascended the steps, completely transfixed by the light fixture that hung about it. 

Doors were an utter inconvenience to Deirdre. Why houses didn’t adopt the automatic sliding doors featured at grocery stores, she didn’t know. And while technology was often confusing to her, and though she was fond of her dated family home, she just really hated the inconvenience of a door. Maybe that was why she had forgotten to lock the front door—locks were an even greater inconvenience—or why she had been staring at her bedroom door for minutes, hoping it would magically open. She’d really have to teach the cats how to open doors for her, one of these days. But finally mustering the strength to turn a door knob, she exited into the hall, and had begun her descent to procure some fruits for snacking, when she froze. She adjusted her silk robe, to make sure nothing was exposed, and stared. Then blinked. Then stared some more. “Who the fuck are you?” But there was one easy answer to strangers on a staircase, her staircase. Deirdre reached out, and with practiced ease and great delight, she shoved the stranger down. 

A woman in silk robes emerged from an upstairs room. It wasn’t Morgan. Nora wondered who it was. Nora even considered asking ‘Who are you’, but the woman spoke first and she thought it would be polite to not speak over her. So instead she opened her mouth to answer. The only thing that came out of that open mouth was a soft “Oh.” As she suddenly found herself being shoved down the stairs. First there was bouncing, limbs and head slapping on carpeted steps until finally there was sliding. In an attempt to defend herself Nora did the only thing she could think of. She shifted. Her clothes tore around her, her body quadrupled in size and the bear emerged. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, the only thing she could really think about was the pain coursing through her body. Staggering  up to her four legs Nora looked up the stairs, asking “Why did you do that?” Of course she had a bear’s mouth with a bear’s vocal cords. It came out more of a mournful yodel, something that Babadook would be proud of. 

There was a bear. For all the shoving of people Deirdre had done, none of them had ever turned into a bear. Deirdre’s eyes rose up and she turned back to her bedroom. She closed the door, a horrible unnecessary thing, and then opened it again, emerging as she just had. Again, there was a bear at the bottom of her steps. “I’m sorry,” she blinked, “I think I must be in a dream. Or perhaps I’m the one who suffered a tumble down the stairs. But you appear to be a bear.” And she was the one talking to the bear, which wasn’t any better. But the bear noises were commendable, almost as great as her screams. In honour of them, and in an attempt to communicate, she offered her own yodels, more like Irish lilting. “What do you want from me?” She gave up after a moment, demanding answers from the bear. If this was a dream, it was a terrible one. Where was the naked Morgan? Or the bones? Or Kaden being set on fire? Or all three at once? 

Nora looked down at the bottom of the stairs where she’d fallen, up the stairs to where the lady still stood. She looked familiar, in a ‘might have seen her picture before’ way but Nora couldn’t quite place it. Probably due to the fact that her brain had just been rattled around in her head. Yodeling again, Nora got her front paws on the first step again. “You made me bear myself.” The bear tried to say, the words colliding into meaningless bear noises. With her two front paws on the first step, Nora realized that she had no clue how to walk up stairs when she was this big. The length of her paw was about the width of the stair. She, in her rattled state, instead of thinking it through decided to stand on her two bear hindlegs. She used the railing to hoist her giant upper half up. “Why did you push me down the stairs?” 

Did bears eat fae? Deirdre considered this as the bear appeared to be climbing up to get her. A supernatural deer had ravaged her home, once. And somehow, the bear was still more strange. “I know I look delectable—I am, as the kids say, a snack—but you shouldn’t let looks deceive you.” Well, if the bear ate her, then she supposed she really did deserve that. She’d known a few to snack on pixies, but really, with the way those things zipped around, even she’d thought about chomping on a couple just to shut them up (she loved them as she loved  all fae, she would remind anyone who asked). The bear continued its rumbling and Deirdre thought she might have seen a spark of intelligence in its eyes, or maybe that was just the chandelier’s reflection.  “I can give you fish,” she finally offered. They’re must have been some salmon in the freezer, beside the brains.

A snack? Nora didn’t eat people. Although, she had some questions about what people would taste like. Someone once said chicken, but she doubted the strange on that internet form had actually eaten human. Weren’t there tonnes of creatures in the surrounded forest that ate people? They liked the taste of humans. No no, Nora had decided long ago that normal meat was enough for her. Fish? The offer was on the table, and Nora with her grumbly tummy was always hungry. As she started struggling her way up the stairs, a pain still throbbing in the back of her head she sang in bear “I am short, fat, and proud of that and so with all my might I up, down, up-down to my appetite's delight. While I up, down, touch the ground I think of things to chew, Mmm, like honey, milk, and chocolate, with a hefty-happy appetite. I'm a hefty-happy Pooh.” For reasons surely unknown, Nora had always loved the Disney character Winnie the Pooh. Of course the whole thing just looked like a yodeling bear climbing up the stairs to maybe eat the human, not asking for the proffered fish. 

Weirdly, it was like the bear was singing at Deirdre. Whatever had happened for her to hallucinate this, it must have been potent; singing bears were her least favourite kind of bear. But she noted the song-song quality of the bear’s yodels now; quite beautiful, if only she weren’t so confused. Well, there was just one way to deal with strange hallucinations. Some silly people might have suggested pinching herself to confirm reality, but Deirdre much preferred her own technique. She reached out, prised the bear’s paws up, and shoved it down the stairs. All of this was done swiftly, as she was trained for excellence, not deliberation, but it felt awfully slow in her head. But the bear had felt real, and so, after throwing someone down a flight of stairs twice, she deduced that this was not a dream. 

It was the shock, wasn't it? As Nora once more found herself bouncing then sliding down the stairs, her limbs going everywhere and the carpet sliding against her, she instinctively changed back. Blood trickled down her arm, her left eye pulsed and a searing pain with shooting through her left shoulder. “Ow.” She mumbled. Having landed securely on a pile of her torn clothes, the naked Nora did absolutely nothing to change this situation. She hurt and quite frankly she wasn’t here for it. The second fall had knocked a little bit of sense in her, if climbing up the stairs resulted in pain, then stay at the bottom of the stairs. Nora opened her mouth to try and say something like, why did you push me? Or Who are you. Instead all that came out with a second, less monotoned “Ow.” 

But the only thing worse than a bear at the bottom of her steps, was a naked, injured person. Deirdre finally went down, staring at the stranger. “Are you okay?” She asked, with all the concern of a woman who hadn’t just shoved this intruder down the stairs. Twice. Although, she hadn’t exactly figured out why the stranger had been a bear for some of it. But along with the memory of fur under her fingers, the torn clothes also told her she hadn’t just imagined it. “You’re bleeding,” she stated, though moved not an inch to help. Instead, she shrugged off her silk robe and tossed it upon the stranger, as if discarding it into the trash. Now she was the naked one, which was usually how she liked things. In her shock, she just couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to do. She imagined the silk robe helped, somehow. “Are you okay?” She asked again. 

There was a world of questions Nora expected someone to ask in that situation. The question Nora hadn’t expected was the one she got. ‘Are you okay?’ Are you okay from the woman who pushed her down the stairs. Nora stared up at the lady, brown hair, brown eyes, beautiful facial structure. The light structure above them made a perfect halo around her face, framing her how she imagined an angel was framed standing above Lucifer as he fell. “You…” Nora’s mouth felt dry as she tried to speak through the pain going through her. “You.. never showed up for our wedding.” She finally recognized the woman standing over her. Deirdre. Her poor brain, that had been rattled around alot decided this was more than enough for Nora today. Darkness overwhelmed her as unconsciousness greeted her. 

“Oh,” Deirdre said. “Nora.” She wasn’t sure what she expected Nora to look like, but a bear and naked were not among the considerations. Lydia did say Nora wasn’t human, so there was that. What were those things that turned into bears? Boob-bears? That explained the nudity. “Well, this is just funny, isn’t it, Nora?” She paused. “Nora?” Deirdre nudged the slumped body with ehr foot. “Noooooraaaaaaaa?” She waited. Oh well. Deirdre stepped over the body with a whistle, off to get her fruits. She picked the salmon out of the freezer and a pillow from the couch on her way back to the staircase. She wiggled the pillow under Nora’s head, noticing the dark coloring forming around her left eye. She put the frozen fish there. Nora wasn’t dead, which according to Deirdre, meant there was no cause for concern. Not that she had much concern to begin with. She noticed the bleeding arm and shifted the silk robe to lay on top as a sort of expensive, ineffective bandage. She shrugged, good enough. And then she went about the rest of her day, Nora forgotten and salmon left to defrost on her purple eye--which was also promptly forgotten. Vaguely, she thought she might invest in some home security, but she didn’t know why the thought came to her. Oh well, must not have been important.

[ladyinthebluebox]

I can relate to the random docs with just a single line of text - so many!!

But - please do tell about ‘Sword training’ ☺️🤍

ahahha, i'm so glad that i'm not the only one to do it. i just... get way too many of those little ideas, and sometimes it's just that, a bit of dialogue or a description and nothing else. it's kinda frustrating at times.

sword training is well... a messy drabble born out of my overthinking of how nice it would've been if the Inquisitor was trained by a multiplayer character with a cool backstory instead of a boring Chantry mentor the game offers instead. so i decided to fix it for myself in a way, besides making it a HC for her.

Guests crammed on the stairways cheered enthusiastically after a dazzling explosion of luminous magic particles that could easily rival the most exquisite fireworks. This spectacle clearly drew attention away from the Inquisitor’s constantly growing battle prowess which was being taken for granted the farther stories of her victories over magisters and demons spread. It probably wouldn’t be so if anyone outside of Deirdre’s inner circle was privy to the knowledge of how just a few months earlier, sworn and faithfully keeping to the path of peace and healing, Messere Lavellan’s expertise with battle magic was very… limited to say the least. Forced by circumstances she found herself in after stumbling out of the Fade, Deirdre needed to learn and to do so quickly. Looking at her now, confidently wielding a gleaming, spectral blade, even he - one of the few trusted mages who kept training her - found it hard to believe.

[visit-fernbrook]

Something weird about Fernbrook.... there was a house that was already here when I got there. Some abandoned mansion kinda deal.

There’s no records of who lived here before Nook Inc. bought it up, but there IS a gravestone on the island. It’s too old and faded to make out most details, but what I can make out is that the person buried here was a girl named Echo.

There’s never going to be answers to these questions, but I can’t help but wonder, what happened to her? How did she die? Why was she buried here?

There’s something weird going on in Echo’s house, too. I expected your average spooky abandoned house deal, but it doesn’t look like a regular house at ALL on the inside. It feels more like stepping into some kind of dreamworld than anything else...

It’s hard to see in there, but it looks like it’s got doors and stairways like a regular house would. Where do they go? Maybe you can find out where?

Related introduction posts: Welcome to Fernbrook!  |  Vesta  |  Filbert  |  Deirdre  |  Louie  |  Grizzly  |  Yuka  |  Sprinkle  |  Pietro  |  Julian  |  Cherry  |  Mac  |  Lucha  |  Beau  |  Twiggy

[dee2822]

If only

Stairway in Irish Forest…

I could be in a place that was always colorful as this one

for then nothing bad would ever really be that bad.

I would go and sit on the steps and just relax and think about how bless it is too just be able to just be here in the moment for everything is about to change.

I can feel it like the changing of the seasons.

    Written By: Deirdre Stokes Copyright ©️ 2019 By…

[mspencerillustration]

Second to One || DISHONORED BIG BANG 2017

Author: @iamsonothere​ Artist: @mspencerillustration Beta: @lordcephalopod

Summary: At the lowest point in her life so far, Billie decides to follow a murderer who can use magic through the streets of Dunwall. A decision that will change her life forever.

[ Read Second to One on Ao3 ] (Excerpt below)

It was magic. One moment she was alone in the night and in the next he crouched only a few feet away. Billie blinked. The figure was gone in a black flutter only to reappear over the balcony down the street. Her jaw dropped. So did the assassin. The three men on the lower balcony didn’t stand a chance. The nobleman leaning on the wrought iron rail cushioned the man’s fall, taking a knife in the throat in the process. His guards, alarmed by the sudden appearance of an armed stranger reached for their weapons. But their movements were cut as short as their attempts to shout by the long blade slitting their throats in one fluid motion. Billie couldn’t get a clear glimpse of the assassin. His dark hair mingled with the flicker of black as he moved on. A long scar was running down the side of his face and Billie was certain he had seen her. He confirmed her suspicion with a wink and turned his back, vanishing in another scattering of black shadow. A second later, he appeared on the street below. The silence of the seconds sped up again and Billie found that she had hoisted herself over the balustrade of her hiding place hanging on to the outward curve almost awkwardly. Billie let go and dropped to the cobbles to give pursuit. The silver cigar case flashed up in her mind. Good money on that, weeks of food. But the image was drowned out by the curve of a slender blade cutting down three men in the blink of an eye. Three men. In complete silence. In seconds. Maybe Deirdre would still be alive if only she had been that skilled. Faster, more precise, silent as the fall of night. Billie followed the assassin through Dunwall. Who was he? And where did he belong? Where did people like him belong? Who were people like him? Following him wasn’t even a conscious decision. Her only fear was that of losing him in the night. The assassin disappeared repeatedly only to reappear in impossible places, up on roof tops, on ducts, on broken stairways. That made it very difficult to predict his movements. To her relief, he did not vanish completely. Any time he dissolved into black air she managed to spot him before he disappeared. Seeing him and following were two very different things though. Billie could not scale buildings in the blink of an eye. She had to scramble up ladders, cling to thin ledges leading around the corners of buildings only to see her prey vanish into another dead end. And she was good. Billie had grown up in Dunwall. Without somebody to cage her and many reasons to not be at home, she knew the city like the back of her hand. Even the posh parts. Still he was taking routes she had never considered before, doubling up on his path and leading her in circles. It was only on average that they kept going south. (Continue)

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Southern-California-Boat-Fire-Investigation-Bay-Area-Victims-559366071.html?amp=y&__twitter_impression=true

Apple Employees Among Dead From Southern California Diving Boat Fire

By Stefanie Dazio |Published Sep 4, 2019 at 8:23 AM, Updated 6:44 PM ET | NBC Bay Area | Posted September 4, 2019 7:31 PM ET |

Two Apple employees including an engineer who went on the trip with his wife and daughter to celebrate the teen's 17th birthday are among the victims of a fire that tore through a scuba diving boat off Southern California's coast, trapping dozens of sleeping people below deck.

Authorities said Wednesday that the bodies of 33 of the 34 presumed dead had been recovered and one person was still missing.

The new count of confirmed deaths came after officials recovered 13 bodies on Tuesday, said Coast Guard Lt. Zach Farrell, a spokesman for the inter-agency joint information center in Santa Barbara representing local, county, state and federal officials involved in the case.

Five crew members, including the captain, managed to escape after Monday's pre-dawn fire that engulfed the boat named Conception as the victims slept below decks near the island of Santa Cruz during a three-day scuba diving excursion. The vessel eventually sank and overturned, making the recovery of bodies challenging.

The U.S. Coast Guard released footage shot from a helicopter while emergency crews responded to a deadly boat fire of the coast of Southern California. (Published Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2019)

Flames moved so quickly through the 75-foot vessel that it blocked a narrow stairway and an escape hatch leading to the upper decks, giving those below virtually no chance of escaping, authorities said.

DNA will be needed to identify the victims. Authorities will use the same rapid analysis tool that identified victims of the deadly wildfire that devastated the Northern California town of Paradise last year, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said.

Brown said he had heard anecdotally that those who died ranged from teenagers to people in their 60s.

The Apple employees were Steve Salika and Dan Garcia. Salika's wife Diana Adamic and the couple's daughter Tia Salika were also aboard, company senior vice president Deirdre O'Brien said in a statement.

O'Brien told the Mercury News newspaper that they were celebrating Tia's 17th birthday.

Salika met his wife at Apple where he worked for 30 years. O'Brien said his "energy and enthusiasm touched so many people across our company throughout his career" and that Garcia "was as passionate about his job at Apple as he was about his love of diving. Both leave many friends behind and will be deeply missed."

National Transportation Safety Board member Jennifer Homendy addressed the media Tuesday to talk about the board's approach to investigating the fatal boat fire in Southern California that is to believed have killed 34 people who were aboard the vessel.

(Published Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019)

A broken-hearted mother said on her Facebook page Tuesday that her three daughters, their father and his wife were among those presumed dead.

Susana Rosas of Stockton, California, posted that her three daughters — Evan, Nicole and Angela Quitasol — were with their father Michael Quitasol and stepmother Fernisa Sison.

Evan Quitasol was a nurse at St. Joseph's Medical Center of Stockton, where her father and Sison had worked after attending nursing school at San Joaquin Delta College.

"Everybody's devastated," said Dominic Selga, Sison's ex-husband. "What caused the fire, that's the big question, that's what we all want to know."

Rosas' husband, Chris, told the Los Angeles Times that her sister, Angela, was a science teacher at a middle school in Stockton. Nicole worked for a Coronado restaurant called Nicky Rottens. A GoFundMe page the restaurant to help the family described Nicole as "an adventurous & loving soul."

The fire broke out shortly after 3 a.m. Monday as the boat sat anchored in Platt's Harbor off Santa Cruz Island, among the rugged, wind-swept isles that form Channel Islands National Park in the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles.

Those on board included students from Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz, a public charter school for grades 7 through 12, the school said.

Scott Chan, a physics teacher at American High School in Fremont, also was aboard with his daughter, said Brian Killgore, a spokesman for the Fremont Unified School District. The district said in a statement that Chan taught Advance Placement physics classes for the past three years.

"His students knew him to be an innovative and inspiring teacher who developed a passion for physics among his students," the district said in a statement. "His loss is a tremendous tragedy for our school district."

Bay Area Teacher, Daughter Presumed Dead in Boat Fire

Chan on his LinkedIn page described his teaching as driven by "passion and wealth of real-world experience from research laboratories, and the electronics, computer, and high-performance automotive industries."

Also below decks was Kristy Finstad, a marine biologist and co-owner of Worldwide Diving Adventures in Santa Cruz, which chartered the boat. Finstad was leading the scuba tour.

Finstad had done hundreds of dives in the Channel Islands, where she first swam with her father as a toddler, according to her company's website.

An East Bay high school teacher and his daughter were among those killed in a diving boat fire early Monday morning off the coast of Santa Barbara. Ian Cull reports. (Published Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2019)

Finstad studied damselfish and corals in the Tahitian Islands, dove for black pearls in the French Polynesian Tuamotus Islands and counted salmonids for the city of Santa Cruz, where she lived. She also did research for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and wrote a restoration guidebook for the California Coastal Commission.

"My mission is to inspire appreciation for our underwater world," she wrote on her company's website.

Dave Reid, who runs an underwater camera manufacturing business with his wife, Terry Schuller, traveled on the Conception and two other boats in Truth Aquatics' fleet.

Schuller said the company's crews have always been meticulous in going over safety instructions.

"They tell you where the life jackets are, how to put them on ... the exits, where the fire extinguishers are, on every single trip," Schuller said.

Coast Guard records show the boat's owners quickly addressed all safety violations over the last five years.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the fire and scheduled a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

Associated Press writers John Antczak and John Rogers in Los Angeles, Julie Watson in San Diego and Janie Har in San Francisco contributed to this story.