faderift | OPEN: this will be a better year

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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Parties are a good place for people watching and with just enough drink in her to mellow out at last, and she's half-chatting to a few of the nobility - her own clothes are apparently fancy enough for them to think she's Antivan, if she keeps her left hand in her pocket or out of sight.

But she's been watching, sidling back and if Katniss happens to go for a particular bottle of red, another hand might wrap around the neck quick as a flash, an eyebrow raised.

"Why does one young lady require so much wine, I wonder?"

Katniss doesn't remove her hand from the bottle of red - she instead looks up to give whoever it as a challenging look - before she recognizes Ara. "Oh, it's you."

She looks at the bottle, then looks at Ara, her grey eyes flashing a touch of mischief. "Oh, one young lady doesn't. But ... say, perhaps a small village of refugees making mulled wine might find a few more contributions to their efforts useful."

"If you could use a hand, I could use a distraction. I don't know who this old dowager is but everyone seems very convinced I'm some sort of relative of hers. It'd be less terrible if they didn't tell me about her old joints and worse." Seriously, she doesn't want to talk about old ladies tonight, not at all, and she lifts the bottle to examine the label, the usual sort of garbage about the vintage, only interesting because she doesn't actually know the regions.

"Come on, there's a really fancy one that's wasted on them, it's in the middle of the table, we can absolutely nab it."

"The old dowager? Is there something particularly amazing about her?" Katniss asked, before she holds out the basket already filled with other goodies.

She paused, before her lips quirk up at the corners. "Ara, I always knew we were going to be good friends. Come on, let's grab it."

"If I'm any judge, it's because she's so old but still with more than three teeth to her name, I think these things are the same everywhere with the very old." It's more rude than Araceli would usually be but she heard a lot. Too much. She might require a bath to get some of the talk of the old woman's health out of her head.

Taking a quick glance to make sure no one's actually looking at them, she turns her back to the company, no one seeming to miss her as she jerks her head, pretending to peruse the bottles. "How many do you want?" She whispers the question, keeping one eye on the people around them, still going on and on about some inopportune marriage someone made to someone else.

"Nice. The nobility's so ... charming." Is Katnisss dry reply as she follows the other woman. She looks around herself, and then goes to glance at the bottles, before feigning disinterest and looking off at the wall. "Two or three. Nothing that they are going to miss right away. When they're drunker later on, I'll come back and ... find more."

She glanced down the table, and smirked faintly. "Plus, see if you can find a place in that dress to hide some fruit."

"It's better this way; if they feel content enough to talk about nonsense then it means they're not disgruntled enough at the state of this place to say anything about it where everyone can hear. Parties like this are where the rumour mills start and they travel back home with them and everywhere they might stop on the way. Because they'll repeat it and servants will hear it and tell other people and eventually everybody knows." And given that not so long ago there was an abomination rampaging around, it's better that they don't have a whole list of complaints as long as their arm to take back with them.

With a nod, she adjusts how her jacket sits, carefully pulling down one sleeve to hide her left hand a little better as she pockets a few things - good thing about tailored garments, you've got plenty of places to hide things. "Anything in particular? Tastes vary and we apparently like to put very strange shit in our drinks according to some."

"... You know, for as proficient as this rumor mill is, I never hear anything about it. It must be for all the rich people." Katniss snorted, as she eyed the fruit bowl, and began to palm the fruit into her bag, and over to Ara to slip into her coat.

"Then we shall take a little bit of everything, for everyone's taste. Besides, you see how people are avoiding the fruit. They want to make it look like they have more than enough money that fruit isn't a precious commodity to them."

"If you learn the right people to speak to and how to be in the right dark corner? You hear plenty. Thieves have to learn such things, especially if someone returns home early and you're stuck somewhere pretending your legs aren't cramping." Don't ever get caught in that situation, it's terrible and trying to get out through the window when you can't feel your legs from pins and needles is awkward to say the least.

"Ah yes, people who don't know what it's like to forget when you last saw summer berries," she mutters, even if it's a decent handful of winter berries that she pours carefully into her pocket. "I take it you know what living like that is like?"

Katniss looked at her curiously, but nodded, "You must have trained for years to pick up those talents. I can stick to the dark corners -- but I'd never be able to do what you do with the ... talking." The hiding, yes. The small talk? Oh Sylaise, no.

She nodded her head quietly, "Only berries I saw were the ones I picked myself, wild from a bush. You?"

"What my parents do for a living? It helps. And sometimes you have to talk yourself out of very tight corners if you're caught at an inopportune moment." Of course a year of training to do just that helps but there are things she isn't comfortable enough to say right now, not when being a rifter makes her strange enough.

"Only if they've had a good enough harvest in another country that they have them left to sell on when the wine and jams or whatever else are all done. Not much grows where I'm from, the land is too salty."

"I admire it. I wish I could talk so well - or eloquently." Katniss stated without envy. She gave her a quiet look, before she nods. "Then make sure to snag a piece for yourself. No one is denied tonight, if I can help it."

"I can teach you, if you’d like to learn, more of it is about listening and watching first, doing as they do. It’s like playing the mirror game and here there are plenty to practice with." Her own skills are sharp but the people here are different enough that she has to practice herself in order to fit in as seamlessly as she can. "You have a good heart, there are few who think of others who might be hungry too, even during a party like this."

"... Really? Well, trade for trade. Whatever you want to know about archery and tracking, I'm your woman." Katniss gave her a lopsided smile, before she shrugged. "I always think about who might be hungry - probably comes from being hungry."

"The archery I will absolutely take you up on because being without any sort of ranged weapon here? Well it makes a girl feel at a certain disadvantage, the tracking might help too, at least with this sort of landscape." She's used to sea, to sand and loose stones, working in the wet and with wind or baking sun, not deep snow or the countryside Thedas seems to offer at least around these parts. A smile is sent Katniss' way because well, she knows that too well. "I used to live in a building full of artists without patrons, younger people or the ones who made only what they loved and that seldom pays the bills unfortunately. I used to be the one with the most money and I would make enough for them all to get at least one good meal a day. They always knew where my spare key was or where to find me if I didn't drop some off with them."

"Then I'll teach you both, and more about the landscape besides. I really think we ought to teach you guys some survival details. Lay of the land, how to protect yourselves using our weapons and our ways." She gave the other woman another crooked smile, "And we can learn yours - best way to learn more about one another, as well."

She looked at the other girl a little more carefully, before she nodded, "You're a good person, Ara. I'm glad those people have you."

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OPEN: this will be a better year

courtyard;

Courtyard

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