[open] we are bound for an unknown destination

[eolasemah]

WHO: Sina and you!
WHAT: General open; Sina has had some bad news, but is choosing not to dwell on it in favor of throwing herself back into her work within the Keep.
WHEN: throughout Bloomingtide
WHERE: Skyhold, always Skyhold
NOTES: Likely some death and illness related stuff. Anything else will be added as we go!



i. the battlements

The expedition is leaving for the Western Approach, as they do. A small, solitary elf stands atop the battlements facing the bridge, waving wistfully, watching them go as she has each time her friends have gone off on Inquisition business.
It is likely Sina will never go with them. It is likely she will never leave Skyhold at all.

She continues to stand there, looking out at the Frostbacks, long after the procession has gone.

ii. the healing tents

Now that she's back on her feet for the most part, after being knocked off them by malady after plague after injury, Sina has devoted her skills to the healing tents. Although the garden is still her preferred place to work, she finds that she doesn't want to be alone, and instead immerses herself in the highly social and mentally busying task of tending to the sick.
Despite being a mage, her assistance is mostly herbal. One never knows what might happen, if she should use her magic too much.

iii. the garden

Sina does still take time to rest and enjoy the garden, sometimes planting and trimming and harvesting, other times simply sitting still and silent on a bench as the evening settles around her.

iv. the library

Often seen either in the vicinity of or working on something for Pel or Adelaide, Sina will tuck herself up by one of the windows, books surrounding her and her thin hands splotched with ink as she takes notes. She tends to be in better spirits at these times, always cheered by the impenetrable complexity of various runes and inscriptions in need of translation.
She's not even that good at it, she just enjoys the puzzle.

v. wildcard

you know how this works

Comments

battlements.

[elegiaque]

It isn't unusual to see Gwenaëlle on the battlements; she finds her way here routinely, summoned by clear air and restlessness, an inability to settle and a need to be somewhere she can easily slip away from again if she needs to. People up here tend to have jobs, or reasons of their own for solitude; she stays mostly out of the way, and mostly isn't bothered. There are a few places she's marked out for being ideal as quiet space to work if she needs it, but...

She watches the procession, too. She doesn't wave; she doesn't have a lot of friends here. She does study the elf near her for a moment, taking in the vallaslin...the shard. Her fist clenches around her own and she thinks about how much worse it could have been, apparently.

"Did you want to go?"

A blunt question asked of a stranger, but 'Orlesian nobility' is likely to account for the presumptuousness of clearly expecting an answer.

[eolasemah]

Sina wasn't expecting to hear a voice so close to her, and she gives a small start, turning to see who addressed her. It's someone she's never seen before: a human woman, which would have alarmed her months ago, but she has no real reason to fear them now.

"...I don't know," she honestly admits, "I want to someday. But there will be rifts."

[elegiaque]

"There will."

Gwenaëlle-- didn't want to go. She wants to leave Skyhold, certainly, but less keenly than she did when she first arrived, and not to run full tilt into peril. There's nothing useful she can do somewhere like the Western Approach (and, uncharitably, she thinks it unlikely this small thing would be any more useful - small, as if she's any bigger, all of an inch difference in their heights), and on some days she suspects there's not really anything useful she does here.

"Well," after a moment, "not forever, one way or t'other. Either the Inquisition succeeds or the world fucking ends," a bit droll.

[eolasemah]

Not forever. Sina wonders if she will see either outcome, or if her forever will end before they can even begin. She offers a strained smile in the woman's direction, then turns her head to look out again, clearly not too enthusiastic about continuing that line of dialog. Everyone will die, or they won't. But she probably will either way.

[elegiaque]

The placement of Sina's shard is rather - striking. Some of them, Gwenaëlle thinks, will probably die sooner than others. It isn't kindness that stays her from commenting as much out loud into the awkward silence that descends between them, but the chill thought of how little they know about these things they bear in their bodies. To take for granted what it is readily apparent is to accept that there is something in her own self she can't control, doesn't understand, and that might kill her -

Just slower. Maybe they'll have solved it, by then. Some fucking blessing, Andraste. Bless your own arse, she thinks, sourly, laying her palms flat on the stone. What good has it done anyone? What good did it do the Herald? If she was blessed. If she wasn't just - there. Like Gwenaëlle had been, in the wrong place at the worst time.

"How did it happen?" she asks, abruptly, and this time she is conscious of the rudeness of the question. Sounds conscious of it. Acknowledges it without letting it stop her. "For you. You didn't go near the rift on purpose."

She assumes. She considers herself slightly generous for assuming.

[eolasemah]

At first Sina doesn't know what Gwen means, and she turns to look at her quizzically. Then the detail about the rift is added, and she understands. Although her expression doesn't overtly change, something about it becomes ...somehow older, thinner, more tired.

"It opened above me," she answers quietly, "...I... think around the time the Breach did." She has no proof of that, but based on how long it took her to get here, the timing seems right.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle is older than Sina - a little, a handful of years - but an outside observer of this moment would be unlikely to pick it. The things she had to grow up for are different, and the world has not asked this much of her before. It hasn't asked nearly as much of her as it does someone like Sina.

That's just as things are. Probably, it's just as things always will be.

"Some rifter girl on the crystals thought it was only them. The rifters. I suppose no one told her about the Herald."

[eolasemah]

Sina watches her dumbly, then bites her lower lip, considering. "I suppose not," she says quietly, "...I wish... we knew how the acquisition differs. How others get theirs, versus how I got mine." She touches it carefully, the thrumming magic crackling as her fingers near it. "...everyone else has them in their hands." A defeated smirk accompanies this. There are some fairly easy conclusions to be drawn about what the consequences might be.

[elegiaque]

"It's probably the angle."

Gwenaëlle glances at her, after a pause - she hasn't bothered, since first looking at her and registering who she was. (Not by name, per se. But the elf with the shard in her chest, yes, that's sort of hard to miss. And not exactly something that goes unmentioned.)

"I don't remember, precisely. But I think my hand was up. If you were directly under it, I mean...well, it's not your face. There's that."

A shard to the face. Maybe she'd have died straight away. It isn't the sort of thing they can get someone to test.

[eolasemah]

There is that. And the thought of having the thing in her face is enough to send a chill down Sina's spine, which, ironically enough, prompts a pang in her chest where the shard is.
"Probably," she agrees, finding that she doesn't want to discuss it anymore. She looks back out at the departing travelers, her spirits dampening further.