faderift | OPEN - Pel's Yarn Shop

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OPEN - Pel's Yarn Shop

WHO: Pel Ashara and OPEN
WHAT: Opening up the yarn shop
WHEN: Present
WHERE: Skyhold, near the stables
NOTES: Will update if there are any warnings.

To say Pel has yarn coming out her pointed ears is accurate--she finds little wool fibers absolutely everywhere. She saw some in her mug of tea once and just stirred it in, hoping she wouldn't notice it going down. She didn't.

She acquired her spinning wheel over a month ago and has now made enough yarn to open her shop, hoping sales can help pay for publishing her book before a new Divine gets elected. Once there's a new Divine, her book will be banned and this will all be for naught.

She sits in a chair behind a blanket with carefully laid-out skeins of yarn, organized by price. Being organized by price, of course, means being organized by color and content. If it's not wool, it's more expensive. If it's dyed, it's more expensive. If it's dyed expensively, of course it's more expensive. Unbleached undyed wool yarn is the cheapest, but it has a range of colors from creamy white to chocolate brown to stone grey. Of the colors, yellow, indigo blue, and earthen red are cheapest, with green and warm purple marginally more expensive. Scarlet is pricier, as is cool purple. There is one skein of very fine silk yarn, an undyed off-white, and a few of middling-price linen.

Among knit wares are shawls, scarves, leggings, and mitts. Some are lacy and delicate, some are thick and warm.

Come one, come all!

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Stella.

[ Normally it's offered with a laugh or a smile, some teasing flirtation or- something. Today? It's warm still but it is strained, Zevran flitting to her side but seeming a touch distressed. Unsettled. ]

Might I steal you away for a moment?

[One of the other merchants always keeps an eye on her wares whenever Pel takes a break. Pel gathers up her money bag and pushes to her feet, ready to follow him.]

[ He takes her by the hand - something he's come to enjoy doing the more often it happens- and walks her to the Garden. Or rather a particular point in the garden. He sits, gestures for her to do the same, and slides on the ring she made for him. Once the roots weave and form about them he shifts and curls until he is able to rest his head on her lap. ]

You loved Gavin, yes?

Yes.

[She's a woman who chooses few words over many, and allows her feeling to be conveyed in the way she strokes his hair as it falls over her lap. Her touch is tender enough to make up for all the words she does not say. He is clearly in need of it.]

Did you want to, when you first began your- association? Courtship? However it is done with the Dalish.

[ He doesn't even know how it is done by humans, let alone other city elves. How is he to know what the dalish did? ]

Want to love him? [She tucks a strand behind his ear.] There were already some feelings there. But yes, I wanted to love him.

[It's an odd question, but she'll follow the conversation where he leads. He's definitely going somewhere with this.]

How did you know that was what it was? That- how did it feel?

[ He has been content with the friendships he's built, the lovers he has taken. But something in that moment the other day- something from that game of seduction turning true.

Twists a place in him he'd long thought dead. ]

[This is getting downright confusing.]

Are you asking how I knew I loved him?

I- yes? No. I am not certain what it is I am trying to ask, forgive me.

[ For a long moment he stares up through the weave of roots and leaves, trying to arrange his thoughts. ]

It does not count with me- the laying with another. It is a pleasing diversion, great fun, quite enjoyable but it is...without sentiment. Without meaning. It weighs nothing. I have been content with this for years but I wonder now if perhaps I should not find someone with which there is weight? Not that I have felt unfulfilled or dissatisfied with my lovers, this is hardly the case.

I am not making much sense at all, am I?

You're making perfect sense.

[She offers him a little smile. She doesn't offer her smiles to just anyone. She's too self-conscious about them, and how dopey they look because of her underbite.]

It's not about sex. Or about discharging some duty or expectation. Do you want this because you've been told it's what adults do and it's best time you grow up, or because you want to love someone and be loved in return?

I am quite grown, Stella, and you know this.

[ He snorts a soft laugh, reaching up to trace her cheek gently with his fingers. Her smiles are rare and sweet things- something she should do more often without feeling quite so wary of them. ]

I want this because I miss it. Or... I think I miss it. So long it's been since I last-

Since I ever...

I do not know how it feels for there to be sentiment and meaning.

[Okay, that was her bad, thinking about Gavin again. His touch makes her smile more, forgetting a little more of her self-consciousness.]

With Gavin, it...we were both terrible at it. Of course I'd never been with anyone else, so I thought it was magical. But sentiment does make up for a lot. You...

It's...metaphysical, when there's sentiment. It's more than the mere act itself.

[She captures the hand on her cheek with her own hand, and turns in to press a kiss to his palm before nestling against it.]

You...loved someone. And never had that?

I have forgotten if I did. I think I might have. It's been years and the way things ended cast a shadow on what joy I found in them.

[ His eyes darken somewhat, lips twisted in a smile that is bitter sweet more than anything else. ]

...her name was Rinna. And she was a Crow.

[That is sombering. The past tense, the profession. They were colleagues and at least one of them was in love, in a world full of the same kinds of people who captured, tortured, and mutilated him just two months ago.

She goes back to stroking his hair.]

Did she love you?

She did. We were...I must start at the beginning, I suppose, to explain.

[ He curls his fingers in hers, eyes drifting closed as he spoke. ]

I was purchased at seven from the brothel for three sovereigns by the Crows. At the time I was put in a cell with about fifteen other children, one of which was a Tevinter slave named Taliesin. He was all I had until we met Rinna. We trained together, slept together, protected one another. I thought that it was how things went. I was what he wanted when he wanted it and in return? I was left alone by the other Crows out of fear of his temper. I was his and he, in some way, was mine.

Rinna was brought to us when we were somewhere between sixteen and eighteen. Things had become...complicated, as you can imagine. But Rinna was- she was a marvel. Hair like blood, a smile like a dagger. Beautiful, clever, wonderful. A better assassin than Taliesin or I at the time. She became a part of what we had. She became ours and we hers- at least until I became hers and she mine. We do not- we are trained to harden our hearts against the kill. As a child I was raised among those who sold the illusion of love and Sentiment. I had never known the feeling.

She was a kindness. [Pel's life wasn't nearly as nightmarish as Zevran's, but she understands. Gavin was the first one to see her as a woman. The first she didn't need to be First around. He was kindness in her life, or life's kindness to her.]

She wanted me without wanting to own me.

[ The words come slow, cut from some deeply hidden and wounded part of an old ache he's ignored for the better part of a decade. Putting words to what Taliesin was, what he wanted, what he did-

It is slow coming. ]

We would sneak off sometimes- not to make love but just to hold one another. To sit like this.

[To sit like they are sitting now? Admittedly, it's the sort of thing she and Gavin used to do.]

Those are the best times. When it's just the two of you and the world falls away. Nobody can blame you for being happy and at peace if nobody can see you.

Exactly so.

It went on like that, the three of us, the two of us, until just before I met The Warden and Alistair. The way it ended...is a large part why I met them. There was a job in Denerim, a Merchant. We had become a skilled team- one of the best in all of House Arainai if not most of the Crows. We would brag of our skill and prowess, the contracts we brought in and completed. Before being sent to Ferelden we'd never left Antiva.

But we took the job, we came and there was a mole leaking information to the mark. A traitor either among us or the supporting Crows we were given for the mission- and to turn traitor? Is to die.

Taliesin...convinced me Rinna was the mole.

[Pel remains silent. No assumptions, no guessing games. She won't pretend she knows the rest of the story. But she can tell where it's going. So she lets Zevran speak of it at his own pace, never ceasing or slowing her affectionate touches.]

Taliesin had never lied to me that I knew of. I trusted him. We confronted her in a back alley in Denerim. With the proof we had-

She plead innocence, swore she would never betray us, betray the Crows. Swore that she loved me and I spat in her face for turning traitor. For using me as I assumed she had and while she wept and promised that she would never, Taliesin cut her throat. She bled out like a dog on the cobblestones- and we left.

[ His eyes are clenched shut against an old ache, staving off the burn; as flat as he makes his voice it is still thick with grief. ]

'We'll tell them a story' said Taliesin. 'They will never have to know. I'll take care of it, Zev. I'll take care of you.'

And I believed him. We returned to the masters but hiding that we killed her did not matter. They knew. They knew as well who the mole had been. Rinna was innocent, but they did not care. We were as expendable as ever. To them, we were nothing.

[Pel bends, pressing a kiss to Zevran's temple. She knows that monster. The Child, she sometimes calls it, and it is the thing she fears most. It's her personification of whatever sadistic, malicious force in the world it is that gleefully deals death to those least deserving of it. Outwitting it is a lifelong endeavor, and never a successful one. It sends plagues, mobs, war, suicide. It doesn't just kill; it mocks. It overturns every sacred thing you are taught, mutilates the bodies, and laughs at what you think you know. Zevran knows the Child, she understands now, though he won't call it that. He might even call it Life.]

And you left them.

No. That would give me a streak of nobility I lack. To leave is to die. I did not leave. I took an impossible job. Grey Wardens are known for their skill in battle, to be only the best of the best. Taliesin took a caravan back to Antiva to wait for me.

I took the contract on the Wardens. Many thought I was trying to prove I could be a master, that I could work without Rinna or Taliesin. None of that is true.

[ The laugh that twists out of him is low and ragged, a bitter thing. It turned out for the best, yes, but- he had not tried all that hard. ]

The reason I took that mission was to throw myself upon their blades and be done with it. To wake at all, to be shown mercy...I had not expected such a thing.

[Now is when her hand trembles, betraying the emotion that has pent up during this conversation. Suicide by soldier. As cowardly and botched as Elan's, though at least Elan's had succeeded.]

You ever wonder why you lived? [she asks hoarsely.] Why you were spared and she wasn't?

Because Jonas was no Crow and he was desperate for every blade against the Blight. [ He squeezes her fingers all the tighter. ] I learned the truth of why she was killed, of why Taliesin lied, some years later. Rinna apparently was the bastard child of an Antivan Merchant Prince that was making a play for the throne. She had supporters and a rival house wished this settled quietly.

Taliesin resented her for having my regard and was paid handsomely for her death.

We met him again, in Denerim. A similar back alley, a similar situation. He said the same thing 'We'll tell them a story, Zev. I will take care of this. I will take care of you.'

I thought I loved him, in my own way. I thought he loved me as much as he had been able. In the end- we fought. I killed him- left him to bleed out on the stairs as he left Rinna- and felt nothing. No grief. No remorse. No guilt.

Not even relief.

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