This is the road to ruin and we started at the end [OPEN]

[leadseasy]

WHO: Yael Flaar and open to all
WHAT: Yael settles into Skyhold and everything is SCARY!!
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: PM me if you want a closed starter and feel free to give me a starter with whatever!

my heart is like a stallion; shard
This may or may not be where one goes to deal with a shard in their hand. This tall Qunari looks nervous and maybe like she's lost, but she's fidgeting by rubbing her left palm against her stomach.

"Excuse me?" She stopped the nearest person (that's you!), looking nervous and sort of apologetic about it. "I...I'm looking for help with..." She decided to just show them, turning her palm outward so they could see the green particle effect that's been stuck to it light glimmering out of it. "Someone said there was someone I ought to show it to, but I didn't understand the directions they gave me."

She could have been ten feet away, she could have on the wrong side of the castle. She had no way of knowing; have fun with it.

it's not my fault i'm a maniac; training
On the training ground, at least, she looked a little more confident. Anyone who wandered into the further, less-populated corners might find a Qunari in her full armor, short hair knotted back behind her head, shooting arrows into a target placed impressively far away. In fact, eventually, she climbed up onto the wall surrounding the training yard to get even further away, and have to shoot at an angle. Her bow was beautiful, not fancy or ornate in any way, but high-quality and well-made.

we can go back and play pretend; meal or tavern
It never seemed like there was an empty table anywhere in Skyhold. There was always at least one person she'd have to be sitting near enough that it counted as 'sharing space'. Perhaps she was just being late to everything.

That was how, holding her food or drink, a person with an empty seat near them might find themselves addressed by an unexpectedly soft voice. "Is that seat taken?" At least she managed it without stammering.

Comments

meal/tavern; timeskipped to just a bit after his graceful arrival

[inagutterson]

Without the rest of the Boneflayers around, and without the familiar presence of Gunnar who had always been within grabbing distance, Yngvi can't really say he's entirely unsettled. It's not as if he's never been alone. Plus there's still the odd nug or two that might follow him around because it was a long bumpy ride from Orlais to Skyhold.

Perhaps the true reason Yngvi is alone is that he's got the table manners of a starving feral piglet, one that doesn't really bother to chew. Just inhaling food. A disturbing amount of food for someone so small, and a chicken bone almost lodges itself when he's startled by the question.

"Course," he replies to-- a stomach? Is the stomach talking? It's very well-spoken for a stomach, his has never come out with anything so orderly until he looks up, then up again until his neck makes an alarming sort of pop. "Hurry up, so I'm not cracking m'head off to peer up at you, bloody tall people everywhere."

Sitting, it's not so easy to tell that for a dwarf, Yngvi's shorter than average.

[leadseasy]

Honestly, the inhalation was sort of refreshing. It reminded her of her own company, of Striker when he was hungry and Ingrid all the time and really, all those things that meant home. That, and the fact that he was a dwarf and dwarves were usually not too scary, had been most of why she'd approached him and not someone else.

She sat down opposite him, plate piled nearly as high as his had been at the start -- she'd had to be taught that it was okay to eat more than everyone else, because being bigger meant that she needed more energy to do the same things. It was helpful to remind herself when she got too conscious of what others were doing. Obviously, this dwarf wasn't going to care.

"Slow down!" she urged him, picking up a chicken leg. "You're going to give yourself a stomach ache." She dug in at a much more restrained pace.

[inagutterson]

Slow down? Slow down around food? Well okay that actually did get him to slow down but not because of the instruction itself, more because it was just a foreign concept. Fishing the bone out to set it next to three more already devoured on the empty plate by his hand, he stares. Holds up a hand to get a good swallow of ale down him because this requires a little libation or something like that, and then opens his mouth.

"I'll have you know that I went ghast hunting once, and at a whole ghast when it decided to launch itself at me and my brother. Swallowed it whole in front of the rest. Thought it'd teach them. Tried to claw to freedom it did but," he slaps his stomach with a hand, "iron stomach, that's what I have."

Now behold as he eats a potato the size of his fist in one go, and continues, spraying soft potato-y crumbs everywhere. "So, you're not Ataash, who're you?"

[leadseasy]

Yael blinked for several moments, trying to picture this. Was that possible? Surely a ghast was too big for someone's mouth, even a dwarf. Surely his stomach couldn't really be made of iron. Could it? She supposed she didn't really know much about dwarves. She'd known dwarves were different, advanced, but she'd never suspected how much!

"I would have loved to see that," she said, absolutely earnest. "My name is Yael. What's yours?"

[inagutterson]

Would that face lie to you? Answer: yes. Several times. In the same conversation. Even if he contradicts himself. Without even caring or breaking a sweat because what's shame, he likes to boot it back down into the ditch as he scampers through life. Now, allow him to snare the gravy from some hapless serving maid and just drown half his plate in it. This is how you make sure the important mechanisms of the stomach don't grind to a halt. That and ale.

Clearly.

"It's something, believe me, especially when they've got their little club things but you know, I'm impressive, what can I say," he replies with a toss of his hair - the envy of Orlesian ladies everywhere. Including but not limited to Orlais. "Yngvi Congealedinagutterson. From Kirkwall, Darktown. You new to Skyhold?"

[leadseasy]

"Yes," she said, tearing off a piece of bread. "I've been to Kirkwall once or twice. It was awful." Yael was under the impression that everyone pretty much agreed that Kirkwall was awful, including the people who lived there. "But I was in Orlais, up near the border, and...well, I..."

She turned her hand to show him the green light shining out of her palm. "That's why I came to Skyhold."

[inagutterson]

"It was better before all the dog lords tramped dog shit everywhere, I'll tell you that for nothing." That's rare that, rare as tits on an archdemon. "When did you go there though? Because it was my home, it was great, still is in places. Never been anywhere like it and I've been everywhere that isn't Tevinter or Par Vollen." The Boneflayers resume is pretty clear on everywhere they've been so that's one of the few things Yngvi is actually honest about.

He's about to ask about Orlais - he can circle back around to it, lots of his stories go that way anyway - but he gets distracted by her hand.

"Stung by a sky vagina," he shakes his head as he says it, gesturing at her hand with his fork as he leans over the table, peering with a morbid fascination. "Did it hurt?"

[leadseasy]

Yael tilted her head, looking sad. The thought that Kirkwall had been great once was a sad one.

After a moment to get past the term 'sky vagina,' she took her hand back. "Yes," she admitted softly. "It still does, most of the time, but they can do a spell on it in the healing tents to help." Not that she went as often as she should. Magic was scary.

[inagutterson]

A given value of great. Like great for business. But always just pretty shit. What with the blood magic and the slavery in the old old old days so that the Veil is just funky enough that you feel it? Makes you all itchy in certain places, like you've put not just your clothes on inside out but your skin on back to front. Hard to explain. But then the doglords rolled up, and that meant fucking Hawke showed up and shit got bad for the Carta because lots of them died because Hawke was a piece of shit. Champion of the Dogturds to be quite honest.

"A spell? Bet if there were more dwarves there'd be a rune for it, just slap one on and boom, job's a good 'un," he says boom as if boom is a comforting word to say but Yngvi got his subtletly from a golem. "D'you trust them? Like, I was in Kirkwall when the Qunari were there and you have a face so--" Look he doesn't know what's going on behind a Qunari mage, he was too busy running around screaming when those happened when they took the scenic route home because why, why did that ever happen. "I mean how did it even happen? Did you wake up with a green hand? Did it bite you?"

No one has ever sat down and explained it, but she's eating with him, she is his captive audience. He is a small filth demon with so many questions.

[leadseasy]

That was a lot of questions for Yael to answer at once, but she just decided to go with the last ones. He could re-ask if anything else was important.

"We were in Orlais, up near the border to the north. One of those rifts opened and...well..." She looked down at her plate. "Two of my company died. When we got away I had this in my hand. I could hardly shoot for a few days, it hurt so much." She made herself control her expression and look back up at him, trying not to let on how sad and lonely she was here. "The Inquisition is the only people who know what to do with these, we'd heard about it, so I left Blue Flag and came here." She hadn't had much in the way of loose ends to tie up, just a letter left for Striker.

[inagutterson]

"Ah."

And it's not that Yngvi is...well Yngvi is a lot of things. A little shit. A filth demon, someone called him that once. But Asher is gone and it's still weird, and maybe Yngvi was very quick to say he'd be the one to come to Skyhold even if he had a hundred and one watertight reasons to be the one to come that no one could see through. Except Gunnar but Gunnar's his brother.

"Sorry, it's shit, losing them." Better fighting instead of-- he knocks back the last of his ale instead, because his voice is too tight for his liking all of a sudden, just like his whole face. "Still...I think them knowing what they're doing is overselling it. Been what? Nigh on a year, summat like that? Must be coming up for that when we started hearing talk of all this sort of stuff about glowing bits, and Heralds and nonsense, but it's not like they've really got much to show for it. Nothing you'd pay for. I mean, you or me, if we were paid for sorting anything at all like this then I don't reckon we'd be getting paid for it, I reckon we'd be out on our arses with our names being dragged through the mud."

[leadseasy]

"Oh, I don't know, I think they've done some good," Yael said innocently. "They do good things mostly and they believe in Andraste and the chant. And at least they're trying," she pointed out. "They seem like the only people who are trying. With the shards and with trying to be good people." She didn't have a particularly good opinion of mages or templars or Gaspard or Celene.

"I suppose I can't really blame anyone for not knowing what they're doing at a time like this," she concluded. "The whole world is just..." She shook her head, looking troubled.

[inagutterson]

It's a very good thing Yael can see Yngvi's face because the farting noise he lets out is incredibly convincing in the way someone who has a brother, and someone who has lived in a certain sort of rough company can only be. "Because we're really going to just hold hands and sing it all away. Melt down all the statues, sell it all off, use that to buy what you need or to have the gold for something worthwhile," he retorts with a roll of the eyes because what a scam, that's all religion is good for in the end, when you want to rip someone off with it.

"I know what they probably should be doing but that's probably too murky and dirty, want to keep their hands as clean as they can."