faderift | OPEN: this will be a better year

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: First Day
WHEN: Wintermarch 1 (forward-dated)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Scouts from both the Western Approach and Emprise du Lion are welcome (but not required) to have returned to Skyhold in time for this event.

There have been better First Day feasts, and less crowded ones, and cheerier ones. It isn't a good year for many to look back on, and this one isn't starting any better. Reports from both Eastern and Western Orlais are grim. Many in the Inquisition can't afford to take more than a few hours away from their work, if that.

But for those who can, the ambassador does her best. At lunchtime some tables, hot food, and finery are reserved for visiting nobility and wealthy pilgrims--cause for grumbling in some quarters, perhaps, but they're the people filling the Inquisition's coffers, and allowances must be made--but there's plenty of stew, bread, and ale for everyone, even with the soldiers and refugees who stay outside the fortress invited inside for the holiday. The recently repaired garden and its carefully tended plants aren't off limits, but anyone noisy and holding a drink will be stopped at the door; the battlements, with their potential for deadly falls, are blocked by Inquisition guards. But the courtyards brim with people, most of them happy despite the possibility that the world might end before another First Day arrives.

If the courtyards are too full of tipsy visitors for comfort, there's also the valley beyond the fortress, expansive, barren, and covered in snow. By the river the soldiers help the refugees make a bonfire larger than would ever be allowed inside Skyhold's walls, and some lend their shields to use as sleds down the embankments. A group of scouts start the most intense game of hide and seek Thedas has ever seen, with snowballs to the face for whoever is found first. In the camp, a refugee girl with her hand wrapped in a green scarf chases other children around the tents, shouting raaar, I'm from the rifts!

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Peeking out from behind a bunch of barrels with a tiny elf girl and a little boy, teaching them the tricks of the trade, when the snowball catches her in the face.

"Hold the fort, I'll go deal with this," she whispers to her brave companions, creeping around and keeping low as she looks for the red robe with a steely glint in her eye. Again she finds cover and whistles sharply, jerking her head.

"Hey, hey señor, tsst, here!"

Sal isn't trying to hide - no point really - but he keeps low behind a mound to pack his snowballs, only popping up to find his targets and attack. He's rolling a fresh pile of snowballs when he hears something. Someone. He looks around, and spots the source.

He looks around, then back to her, then points to himself questioningly.

"Who? Me?"

Peeking over to keep an eye on her comrades, still hunkered low, probably huddled up together to keep out of the cold now they can't hide under her 'borrowed' dark cloak, she turns her attention back to Sal.

"I wish to propose a truce of some sort. On behalf of my small friends. And someone learning this 'sport' for the first time."

Because why would people actually do this when her fingers and nose are never going to recover.

Sal narrows his eyes to where she's peeking, trying to see if her small friends are just small people, or are children. One is going to get more leniency than the other.

"A truce, huh? I think I'm agreeable to that. But you're asking me to give up a number of targets." He grins, not actually upset about this. "I'm just learning myself, actually."

"When one does not even come up to my hip? I think you can spare her and her friend." Being children, they do peer up because she's disappeared and they're nosy, huge eyes all that can be seen of the little boy when his scarf is wrapped tightly about the rest of him, rather frantically, she signals for them to drop, just as a snowball from another direction sails past them.

"Though your attire is very striking, I think the first lesson is camouflage for this situation, unless you wish to be a dread figure striking frozen fear into your foes."

He spies the children, and grins and waves at them before they hide away. "I agree. You have your truce."

Unfortunately, he's too slow to duck back into his own hiding place, and a snowball catches him in the shoulder. She's not wrong. He brushes it off. "I don't think anyone is afraid of me," he laughs. "I hadn't planned on playing in the snow when I got here. I'll be better prepared next time."

"Gratitude a thousand times señor...forgive me, I failed to get your name." Even if it's just to keep him safe whenever she has to return to her own side although two little shapes are soon scurrying over to find safety with her once more, peering up curiously before they hunker back down again.

"I thought people might be afraid of the scary rifters but it's more fun to get one to join in with their games apparently." As she speaks, one of the little ones makes a good attempt at throwing a snowball at whoever hit him and she pauses to cheer them on because hey, you need to encourage the little ones. "Are you newly returned from one of the assignments?"

"My pleasure." If there is one thing he adores, it's tiny people. Children. They're so full of life and joy and imagination, with so much to look forward to (one would hope). He gives each of them a wink and a smile. "I'm Salvatore. You? You're a rifter?"

He gathers up a ball of snow and hurtles it the direction the child was aiming, his throw a bit better, but still hitting nothing. Oh well. "I am. I've just come back from the Western Approach. Quite a change from this."

"I am indeed, Araceli Bonaventura, at your service." It's a risk to bow but custom dictates that she must though she gets an arm out and behind her to hit the snowball before it actually strikes her.

Bless her thief reflexes, she will not have someone hit her on the arse with a snowball.

"Oh you poor thing, you must have had sand everywhere and without a sea to make it somewhat bearable! Though I do hope your ventures were successful, for whatever value of success is seemly." The news from the Emprise still weighs heavily on her, that there are such terrible things in the world that she couldn't even dream of.

"That is a lovely name. It suits you." He raises an eyebrow at the snowball deflection, and then claps. "And such quick reflexes. I am impressed."

He hunkers down, hoping to put as much of his red self out of sight as possible. "We collected a wealth of information. Maker willing, my time spent drying out in the wasteland will not have been for naught. Though there was an oasis that was quite lovely, if you could forget all the deadly things surrounding you."

"My mother has good taste - she picked the first and I suppose in picking my father she chose the last too." There's a little bit more but here most people find her name enough of a challenge as it is without tagging 'y Castell' onto it. "As for that, I am a thief, we must be fast and sharp as any blade if we wish to avoid being clapped in irons and thrown in a cell. The snow is merely incentive in this case."

Crouching down until she's about at the same level as the children, she has to laugh at that. "Is that the unspoken truth about this land? That everything wants to kill you and probably eat you too? I should have liked to this oasis though, provided it was nothing like the Mire with things coming out of it. That I can very much do without."

"A thief?" His brows go up. "I haven't come across that yet. Well, not in a friendly way. And not nearly so pretty." It was a long road from Nevarra to here.

He laughs as well. "Much better than the Mire. Warmer too. And no dead things rising from the water. Just nugs."

OPEN: this will be a better year

bonfire;

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