faderift | [Open] Toy debates

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[Open] Toy debates

WHO: Oghren and whoever
WHAT: Oghren is looking for toys or games for kids. For reasons.
WHEN: Various points during the month
WHERE: Market
NOTES: Oghren. Really he's the main warning you need in this.

When one was thinking about a very drunk dwarf who was rough around the edges and more than a little gross and perverted, one did not usually expect to find said dwarf in the market looking around at different toys and games for children. Yet this was where Oghren was for most of this month, studying the different things there and grumbling to himself as he debated whether one was better than another. Would this be fun? Would anyone want something like this one here?

Crossing his arms, he stared at one stand, looking back and forth between a board game and what looked like a wooden puzzle that made a duck. One of those brain teaser things that he obviously he would never be able to solve.

"Felsi's better at this than I am," he mumbled before noticing someone watching him. "Looking at a free show here?"

Okay maybe he was a little moody because he hated being so bad at this. Don't mind him.

[ooc: Oghren is looking for toys/games to send to his kid! Don't mind him being moody though. He's just having issues with the fact that he feels like a failure of a dad for not knowing how to toy shop.]

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Despite having little intention of staying in the Gallows longer than is strictly necessary until other arrangements can be made for herself and for Kieran, they still have needs that send Morrigan out into the city more often than she'd like because of all the cities she's been? Kirkwall rankles. Perhaps it's the history. Perhaps it's having to live in what was once a Circle when she had been an apostate all her life. Perhaps it's what happened when she came to help retrieve an eluvian from here. Perhaps it's the shadow of her mother's last sighting.

So many possibilities or just that Kirkwall is a deeply unpleasant place with little protection afforded to it unlike Skyhold. Oghren is...not exactly a welcome sight because it's Oghren, but Oghren is familiar, a reminder of a long time ago, something enduring and constant unlike so many other things at this very moment which is why she stops and smiles, drawing close to his side.

"Oghren," half-chiding, half-amused, much the same as ever, "have a care or the merchant will believe the tales of the appetites of berserkers." She leans past him, picks up the duck and prods at the parts. "Kieran has a thing like this, a dragon, all moving parts."

"Not like those tales aren't mostly true." He grumbled that but obviously he wasn't that serious. Huffing, he sort of leaned over to her to look at the duck that she'd picked up. The kid had one of those, huh? A dragon but still one of those puzzle toys.

"He like that dragon of his?"

Maybe if he could figure out what toys and games that weird kid liked he could get an idea of things that his own kid would like. His wasn't all that odd like the witch's was but they were both still children in the end. That had to count for something in his mind.

Morrigan smiles at said merchant, he takes a half-step back to leave this strange pair to it. A dark mutter about these ingrates and freaks coming to Kirkwall, wasn't it bad enough they had all them refugees and the Qunari, now this lot? Can't a man make a living?

"Adores it." Nothing guarded in her voice when she talks about Kieran, only fondness and warmth, offering the duck to him after she's done examining the mechanism herself. "He has many soldiers of all shapes and sizes, an ogre or two. Now he has a dragon to sweep in to attack his armies when he re-enacts some ancient tale or for his brave Wardens to slay when it must play the role of Archdemon."

Don't all little boys like to play soldiers? Even little mage boys raised by witches adore it too. It's probably one of the most normal things about him.

"Sometimes the dragon has slain even I," she adds in a low tone, the air of confession in it for his ears only.

"Weird one yours is. Then again, mine is too. Has all these smarts to him. If I didn't know Felsi better I'd say he wasn't even mine at all. Too good looking, too smart."

Normally he wouldn't talk about that so easily but there was something about Morrigan having a kid of her own that made it easier to confess this stuff. Probably because she got it better than any of the others did. Better than the elf too. Oghren scratched his chin for a second or so then gave a little laugh.

"Bet he'd like some ruddy puzzle."

Okay. Real talk time.

"...Might have lied to you about what his name really is. I don't want people getting it in their heads I've got soft spots or anything but you'd know better." He looked up at her. "Named him after the Warden."

"Kieran is my son, if there is blame for how Kieran is, then tis to be laid at my own feet, not his." When her voice cracks on the words, it's as if a thing as thin and fragile as an egg has been dropped from a great height when she has said nothing that isn't true so far as the world and Oghren know: Kieran is her son, Morrigan raised him, so as each thing in the world is left with a fingerprint or mark of a maker or craftsmen, is it not much the same with a child?

(No one asks after parents, the legend isn't so interesting when it's a real flesh and blood thing to someone that raised her.)

But Kieran is hers. A choice, a bargain, her son after those things. What he is…

And she's been in her head too long, she really ought to say something to him. "Were you not considered a fine example of a warrior in your day? Dwarves are not where my eye lie," honestly men aren't where her eyes lie at all but she well remembers where all roads lead to, "but twas the nostrils most offended by you. The ears in the night. You have lived this long, few who have no wits about them do."

The fact of the matter is that Morrigan understands what happens when there's a child because you go looking in that child as if they're a strange sort of mirror for all the bits and pieces that are you reflected back, and sometimes they're strangely beautiful but all too often you brace yourself, ready to recoil from what might stare you right in the eye.

She smiles, managing a laugh that for perhaps the first time in all the years since they first met sounds genuine without a hint of malice or a joke at the expense of another lurking in it. "Jonas? I'm sure he'd be honoured to know he lives on in one deserving of his name."

He actually gave a laugh. How he'd come to have this connection with the witch was beyond him. Who knew having a kid could do that to you. It wasn't anything he'd ever been able to predict. But it was really nice. Because it meant he had someone who got him in a way.

"Heh. He sure would be, huh." Would probably go straight to his head. Was something he kind of liked about the Warden honestly. Made him an arse but one that he could get.

"So, looks like you got some eyes for me if you've been paying that much attention. Bah but I don't feel like chasing after your skirts." Weird how that was. Wasn't like she'd stopped being attractive.

"I was one of the best though. Stood high above the others when I was in the warrior caste. I was going to be known by the Stone for years to come. Least I was before I went and messed that all up."

It makes life less lonely. Loneliness is a terrible thing, it'll eat your heart to keep itself warm and from starving in the winter after all.

"Perhaps that is where we shall all find him, trapped somewhere with his head caught in a doorway, over-large through all the praises thrown his way with so few shown for all those who helped along the way." There are plenty of decisions Morrigan disagreed with just on the principle of they had a job to do so why are we doing these other things and helping people and why do you care so much but it's very hard to entirely hate someone who helps to slay your mother (or appears to do so) and who gets someone to go along with the plan to assist in freedom even if it's to save his skin and soul too.

Morrigan laughs, shaking her head. "The ladies of Thedas shall no longer be casting daggers at me for that then." A hundred other things, such as being head of the anti-pastel movement and thumbing her nose at the no masks rule in Orlais but well, Oghren you've earned this.

"You would not have your son, had you not done that." And because Morrigan cannot stop herself sometimes with some things, because there's something of the magpie in her. "Would you change it? Had you the opportunity?"

It was a good question honestly. Would he go back and change what had happened with his first wife? Just put up with the miserable life they'd been forced to be married into? Never touched the drink that had ruined it all? He never would have ended up where he was now. All those mistakes had led to him a path that was actually...decent. Maybe not perfect but he wasn't perfect so it wasn't something he'd ever really wanted honestly.

Would he change it.

"Nah. I made my bed. To have my son, even if it's like this, means more to me than I really know how to say." He gave a little smile that wasn't gross or rude or anything people usually associated with him. It was genuinely content.

"I don't really want to imagine a life without him in it now that I have him. You know?"

Perfect, in Morrigan's experience, has only ever come after, when she's tried to convince herself that a bitter thing is sweet, or when she's needed to keep herself warm on a long cold night. Perfect is at the very best the moments when she held Kieran in her arms and realised she'd come to care. When she hadn't begrudged him. When she'd stopped feeling as terrified. His laughter and stumbling first steps and hesitant first words all hidden in a world that isn't a world exactly, imperfect moments made perfect.

"I thought all children small, noisy, smelly creatures once, not even fit for the cooking pot. Now there is Kieran and I would move heaven and earth for him." She can't imagine Flemeth doing that for her. "If you permit it, Kieran was very fond of Zevran's lad though they were far from one another in age, I am sure he would be happy to write to yours."

(He'll probably send a strange Chasind looking object of his fashioning, roll with her weird son, you're probably going to find one.)

"Oghren," she hesitates because sentiment. Still strange sometimes. "I am glad. So many of us scattered to the winds but I am glad that for all that the world clawed that you have this. He will always be worth it. No matter what comes."

"You know, I bet he'd like that. Have that little one write something up and I'll send it with my next letter. Can't hurt to get them both some more friends."

It could be lonely being a child of someone with influence. Reputations or even powers could warp a life. The parents struggled to get close to people but the children didn't exactly have the easiest time either. At least, that was what Oghren figured.

"You know, Morrigan, I never thought you'd be the one I'd end up being able to talk to about all this. Here we are though." He gave a little laugh then looked at the toys again before looking up at her.

"Wanna get a drink?"

"More than a few of Kieran's have slipped away over time." Mage children raised in Circles have their beliefs and teachers, the other children have their own. The lifestyle doesn't suit everyone after all. Or the values. Or there's something off enough about him that as children age, they stop being as accepting of the oddness of his words when they mention it to whatever person takes care of them.

Pausing to purchase a strange little soldier that she knows Kieran will like because the arms move up and down and he doesn't have one of those (she doesn't think so, she's well-acquainted with them from the amount of times she's stepped on them in bare feet and found such bruises after) she smiles. "There is little that has turned out as I imagined thus far with the Inquisition. If you think to take me to the Hanged Man however...I could smell it when we arrived. To think that Ferelden had the clean taverns."

"Nah. You may have grown up in those Wilds but you got some class and I like you." Sometimes his brutal honesty could actually be nice. Rarely but it could be. "Figured I'd bring you to my place where I keep the really good stuff. Been collecting some good bottles for awhile now."

He even still had a couple that had been with him for years which he had been keeping around for special occasions. Couldn't just drink away all the good stuff. Not when he could drink away the piss of the world first then come back to what was good and have a grand old time. Priorities. His were in order. Maybe not in all the right ways that people would prefer but hey he was doing his best here.

"Somehow my room smells better than that tavern..." He seemed baffled by that very idea as he finished saying that, of course.

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[Open] Toy debates

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