faderift | I see a mountain and I wanna climb it... [OPEN]

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I see a mountain and I wanna climb it... [OPEN]

WHO: Ariadne "Everdeen" and YOU
WHAT: The aggressively cheerful demon attempts to make herself useful
WHEN: Throughout Cloudreach
WHERE: Around Skyhold
NOTES: None foreseen; will update as needed

There were days when Skyhold felt as far away from home as possible. Other days, though, it felt just like home completely. The refugees, in particular, reminded Ariadne of Valeria and dug up her inescapable urge to be useful. And while she held no position and had no responsibilities exactly, there were still all the little things she used to do back home. And while little things seemed like just that--little--she firmly believed that even the smallest pebble would create lasting ripples.

And so she'd developed something of a routine. She was always out and about every morning, doing her best to make herself useful. She would start her days in the medical tents, offering to fetch and carry anything the healers might need. After all, you didn't need any sort of special training for that. Her fingernails were sharp. She could rip bandages. Her legs were healthy. She could get water. And she certainly knew how to start a fire.

After each meal, she could be found in the dining hall, picking up leftover scraps of food, things that no one would miss. A roll here. A strip of dried meat there. She filled up her lumpy bag and took it all out to the refugees, passing it out to them without so much as a word.

Sometimes, she would try to make herself useful in the gardens. Ariadne had always had a talent for plants. They made sense to her in a way that humanoids never could. And there was something peaceful, something relaxing that came with plunging her hands into the dirt, aerating the soil and planting seeds. She would hum quietly to herself. Sometimes, she would sing an old folksong from Valeria:

The light in your eyes is my heart’s bane
One look from you and I go insane
You’re the beginning and the end of my pain
Now that I’ve seen you

Each word you say sends my heart reeling
The unfair cards that life keeps dealing
Mean I can’t escape this feeling
There is nothing I can do

In the evenings, she'd climb up into a tree. She'd developed a bit of a following among some of the children living in Skyhold. They were nervous around her; this mysterious Rifter with the face of an idol. They kept their distance, but at the same time, they managed to appear like clockwork. She would play her flute for them and they would dance beneath her tree until their parents called them in to bed.

After that, Ariadne would play her flute for herself.

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Ellana was out late in the gardens, letting the breeze tickle at her skin and flutter her hair around her face. She wasn't very skilled at growing herbs, but she followed instructions well enough, and she checked the pots to see if they were well watered. Of course, with people like Sina and Samwise around, each plant was lovingly tended to.

She lingered, wandering from plant to plant, dipping her her to smell the flowers that didn't close up for the night, and listened to the flute being played from nearby. When she looked for its source, she found herself gazing up towards the branches of a tree. Slowly, she approached, not wanting the woman to stop on her account.

As it happened, Ariadne wasn't playing a song. Not a real song with a beginning and an end. Maybe it had started that way, but her mind began to wander. Her playing seemed to continue on, like some kind of automatic function of her being, as thoughtless as breathing or blinking.

It happened, sometimes.

No harm, really.

But her thoughts, wandering to the dense forests of Deleo, were interrupted by the scent of a humanoid back in the real world. She blinked herself back to attention and looked down. She'd seen the girl around before, but she couldn't put a name to the face. So as quickly as she could, while sounding natural, she found a way to conclude the song.

"Good even."

"Hello," Ellana replied, hoping she hadn't distracted the player from her tune. But if she did, this person wasn't telling her to go away, so maybe she didn't mind.

"That was beautiful," she continued. "I have a flute -- a simple one -- that a friend gave me for my birthday, but I don't know how to play it yet. So until I start practicing, I'll have to admire those who can play, like you."

Ariadne bowed her head politely, the long, rope-like braid over her shoulder bouncing and dangling in the air. "Thank you, my lady," she said, voice like a sparrow's. "I'm sure you'll play beautifully, once you learn."

It was, perhaps, an Alastrian bias. But she firmly believed that everyone was capable of creating beautiful birdsong, like her own.

Music was the reflection of the soul. And everyone had a beautiful soul.

Or so she liked to believe.

"I'm learning songs for the lute right now," she added. "That's taken up all my musical energies at the moment." Meaning that she could only focus on one instrument at a time or she was likely to confuse herself. She was still very much a beginner.

"Oh, and I'm Ellana, or Councilor Ashara of the Mage Council here."

Tucking her flute away in her bag, which was safely stored in the crook, where the branch met the trunk, Ariadne hooked her knees around the branch and flipped down. For a second, she hung upside down, before grabbing hold with her hands and carefully unhooking her legs, lowering them to just above the ground.

She landed neatly, as if she were as light as a feather. And with equal grace, she dipped into a curtsy.

"A pleasure to meet you, Lady Ashara," she said, bouncing back up straight. "I'm Ariadne. Ariadne Everdeen."

Ellana watched with an amused smile. The action reminded her of her clan, and the way some of them climbed and descended from trees. She'd never been an avid tree climber herself.

"Oh? You must be very special to be claimed by Katniss."

Ariadne's eyes widened for a moment, wondering how she knew she'd been 'claimed' and not born into Katniss' family.

But then she remembered the damn shard in her hand.

Sometimes, she could almost bring herself to hate that thing.

Shyly, she tucked her hands behind her back. "I don't know about 'special,' my lady," she said. "I'm pretty ordinary. But her cat really, really likes me a lot."

"Sometimes that's all it takes," Ellana assured her, voice softening. It was a little strange to be called a lady, though Ariadne wasn't the first to do so, and the habit wasn't restricted to rifters who didn't know how elves were viewed here by most people. Some natives of Thedas called her a lady too. And so she didn't move to correct the form of address.

"But I'm sure you're hardly ordinary in Katniss's eyes."

She shrugged shyly. Actually, Ariadne was quite sure that Katniss was aware of some of her secrets. It was something they would have to settle one day. But for now, she felt safe, knowing that Katniss wasn't about to go telling everyone about it.

Especially given the obsession that the natives seemed to have with demons.

"She calls me 'aggressively cheerful,'" Ariadne said, smiling fondly. "I think it's meant to be a compliment. Although she did put a sign on her house that says 'beware of cat and aggressively cheerful girls.'"

That was a joke...

Right?

"I think you're right," she replied. "If anything, she's letting you know that she can't be in a bad mood with you around. And is warning others that if they come to visit, their bad mood will disappear."

Ariadne laughed a bright, bell-like laugh. "I hope so," she said. "After all, there's enough gloom to go around. And really, a bad mood never accomplishes anything."

But did that make her a jester? A fool? If the way of things was to be sad and sour all the time, she was even more of an anomaly than before, wasn't she?

"Things have been very grave as of late," she admitted. "I'm hoping all that is past us now. There's still a war to fight, but if things here at Skyhold could be less dire that would help things a great deal."

"I wish there were a way to end your war," Ariadne said, sighing softly. But she knew, just as well as anyone else, that some entities simply couldn't be reasoned with.

Which left an awkward predicament behind.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. It's not my place to say things like that."

"There's nothing wrong with wishing to end something that's hurting so many," she reasoned. "This isn't like the war between the mages and the Templars. This war is against someone who wants to rule the world as a god and drive it into darkness. All of us hope to end it. It just won't be an easy thing."

"I have a friend who likes to say that nothing worth doing is ever easy," she said. "And he's been fighting against that kind of evil since he was four years old, so it must be true."

Poor, poor Aden. He was the author of so many of his own misfortunes. But he never stopped trying, he never stopped fighting. Ariadne longed to emulate him in that regard, even if his tactics were occasionally...

...questionable.

Well, no. Not questionable. But so entirely motivated by emotion that they sometimes didn't make sense.

"I do wonder, though, if there are other ways of fighting which haven't been considered."

"It wouldn't surprise me if there were. Why? Do you have some ideas?" Ellana knows the advisers all work hard, but because of that, some things slip past their notice, like the letter the elves sent to them concerning Galadriel. Cassandra intercepted it and answered it herself, without showing the other advisers. There are probably people here who have ideas on how to fight this war, but who are either too afraid to approach the advisers, or think they wouldn't listen anyway. A rifter probably doubly so.

She demurred a bit. Ariadne didn't like to think about waging war. She would always and forever favor diplomacy.

Still. Her world did have something she could offer, extreme though it was.

"Well," she said slowly, pulling out the word into a few syllables. "There's always time magic, isn't there? Do you have it here?"

Ellana's pale face seemed to pale even more at the mention of time magic. It was something that had always just been theoretical until the Herald had experienced it at Redcliffe. There was no way it could stay secret with the Inquisition soldiers in the room to witness the Herald and Dorian disappear, then immediately reappear, back from the future. But it was a dangerously unstable form of magic.

"In a way," she began, frowning a little. "It's not something you just do, but something you can create. It was used by Magister Alexius in Redcliffe. He tried to use it to kill the Herald, but couldn't, because he couldn't go back in time to before the Breach was created."

"It was considered a final resort back home for me," she said, treating the topic with as much reverence as Ellana seemed to. "As we were preparing for the worst, the leader of our resistance put together an elite, strike team, tasked with the possibility of going back in time to prevent the rise of a...war lord."

She neglected to mention that she'd been placed on that team.

It didn't matter.

"I'm not sure how this Magister intended to weaponize it...especially going forward instead of back..."

"He tried to go back," she stressed, "But time was somehow locked when the Breach was formed. There is no way to reach beyond it to prevent the war from happening in the first place. And so we must look for other ways."

"Oh."

She shouldn't have been surprised, really. It had been a bit of an extreme suggestion. Really, she should have looked at the probabilities, first. Except for the fact that she couldn't see them here. Not the way she could back home.

So much missing context...

"...but...if there's a lock, shouldn't there be a key?"

Ellana tilted her head, haven't never considered that. "That I can't say. When we're talking about magical theory and turning into something practical, I'm afraid I get a little lost. I just know practical magic."

"That puts you one up on me," Ariadne said, with a hint of amusement. "I'm afraid I don't know any magic. I just sometimes have ideas."

Sometimes even good ones.

She shrugged up one shoulder to her ear. "And I don't like war, is all."

Edited 2016-04-05 20:18 (UTC)

"There are many who would say it's better to not know any magic here." It was stated matter-of-factly and without bitterness. She well knew how most viewed mages, but getting angry about it wouldn't solve anything.

"I don't like it either. Too many think it's some kind of glorious thing."

She tilted her head slightly, like the curious little sparrow she was. But in the end, she decided against asking Ellana to elaborate about knowing or not knowing magic.

It was so hard to understand the way things worked here. If only because it was so different from the way things were done back home. Magic was just...a matter of course. A natural part of life.

But what did she know? She didn't have it.

"There's glory in defending and protecting the people who matter to you," Ariadne said. "Sometimes, people just...mix that up with war."

"It does feel good to protect others," she admitted. "But I don't need thanked for it, or my name remembered. And I certainly don't feel glorious knowing that people are dying." A frown touched her lips for a moment. "I just want the future to be better for everyone than it is right now."

"There are always at least three million, eighteen hundred, and twenty eight different possible futures from one second to the next," Ariadne said. "Even if everyone could see them all, I doubt everyone would agree on the perfect possible future."

Which was one of many reasons that she was glad only a handful of Alastrians had been born with her particular knack for probabilities.

They already fought enough as it was!

"What would yours look like?"

Ellana wondered where Ariadne came up with that number. Especially since it was exact and not an estimate. She must be quite skilled at math, and Ellana couldn't help but think that she and Felix would get along.

"My future?" She paused to let out a deep breath. "My people would have land of their own that would never be taken away from them again, like it always has been in the past. We could build permanent homes and live in peace. Those who wanted to be isolated from humans could be, or they could live closer to human settlements if they wished. Humans and elves would get along and there would be no more hatred." That declaration left her with a rueful smile. "It's all just a dream now."

Ariadne tilted her head even more, looking at Ellana practically sideways. "It's so strange to think that Elves are viewed as something...less. Where I come from, they're the most powerful race in the realm. Once conquerors, in fact. Some even slavers, in the distant past."

The way Elves lived here, it was only slightly better than Alastrians.

Her confusion was mingled with a healthy dose of sympathy.

"I've heard similar things from others. But elves in your home have a very different history than they have here." The saddest part was that the elves once were the most powerful race in Thedas. "Long ago, we had an empire, but it was invaded by the Tevinter Imperium and we were defeated in battle. The Imperium took those who survived as slaves. It has been a long, sad story ever since that time."

"I'm sorry to hear it," Ariadne said.

And when she said it, it wasn't a pleasantry. Not a nicety recited because of any social demands. It wasn't even empathizing. She really, really meant it. In a way that only Ariadne could.

A sickeningly sweet way.

Ellana offered her a small smile of thanks. Perhaps it was because Ellana had a rather sweet nature herself that she could recognize the sincerity in Ariadne's words. Or maybe she just wanted to believe it. In either case, she took the rifter at her word.

"Ma serannas. That is how my people say 'thank you.'"

"Ma serannas," Ariadne repeated, perfectly matching Ellana's intonation and accent.

She hesitated a moment, temptation struggling against her better judgment. But, finally, she decided that it would be all right to probe into the language a little further. After all, how could Ellana know that Alastrians picked up on new languages in an instant?

"My aunt served as a translator for a royal court back home," she said. "I'd love to hear more of your language. Maybe learn a little. I think it would be beneficial, if I'm going to be here awhile."

"I could tell you some words and phrases," she admitted. "But unfortunately elven is a mostly lost language. Years in slavery meant we lost most of it. I also wouldn't feel right teaching you our songs and what they mean, but anything an elf would say in normal conversation, I can teach you." The elves struggled to hang onto what little of their culture they had left, and tended to hoard it too. It made them isolationist -- something Ellana didn't like. And after the Keeper of the Ralaferin clan spoke of the elves' culture to scholars and it was published, many felt it was a betrayal. Yet now that that information is out in public, Ellana felt she wouldn't be doing anything wrong.

"To start, the way we elves greet others is: Andaran atish'an. It's formal. It means 'enter this place of peace.' With other elves, or those we feel close to, we use the familiar: Aneth ara. It means 'my safe place.'"

"Andaran atish'an," she repeated, picking up the accent again. "Aneth ara." The syntax, alien though it was, made perfect sense. The rules of language were the rules of language, no matter where you were. It was entirely possible that Ariadne had it in her to recover the lost language.

But she decided not to offer. Not right now, anyway. There was only so much of her hand she would show at once.

And besides, it felt like an invasion of privacy somehow.

"I like the rhythm of the language," she commented instead. "There's a lyrical component of it. Like the Elf language back home."

Ariadne picked up on the vowel sounds easily. Ellana was impressed.

"Our language has no hard consonant sounds," she explained. "That probably makes it sound like music."

She nodded. "That's how the Elves first learned to communicate, they say. By singing to one another. The songs eventually became smaller and shorter. And then they became words."

Ariadne couldn't help but laugh. "But that may just be a myth."

"Even if so, it makes for a good story. I love stories like that, when something beautiful happens to explain things in the world." Ellana had a romantic soul, and loved things of that nature.

"I could tell you all sorts of stories," Ariadne said. She used to collect them. Like pearls on a strand. It was her favorite part of living in Valeria, the center of it all. True, it was now the last refuge. But when she'd been a girl, it had actually been a port and a living, breathing kingdom.

She frowned though, her enthusiasm tempering slightly. "But...I suppose it might offend. Sound like some sort of heresy, to talk about the gods of my homeland."

"Why? They would be gods to you, but characters from a story to me. I couldn't be offended by that." Ellana was secure in her beliefs in the elven gods. After all, she had to endure talk of the humans' Maker every day.

"Unless you mean it would be offensive to your gods to speak of them outside your world? I wouldn't want you to do anything you aren't sure about."

"Oh, no!" Ariadne said quickly. "Nothing like that. I just...well, this is an Inquisition, after all. I wouldn't want to be caught saying the wrong thing when I'm only telling a story."

It was actually a constant concern. After all, 'Inquisition' had a very specific meaning back home. One that wasn't very nice.

"To be honest," she added, "the gods and I had a tenuous relationship back home. I had been thinking of changing over from worshiping the gods of my mother to the goddesses of the Elves.

Ellana inclined her head a little in understanding. Despite the diverse group that had come together here, many were still a conservative, suspicious bunch.

"As you wish. Maybe another day, you can tell me in private." She would like to hear about those gods and goddesses.

Ariadne ducked her head, her braid sweeping in the air between them. "I would be honored," she said. Maybe in the tavern. She felt a little less safe there, now that Marcel was gone. But it would serve.

And it felt somehow...outside.

"For now, I think I'd better turn in for the night, but it was good to meet you. I'll find you again, for those stories."

She gave the other woman a bouncy, little curtsy. "It was a pleasure meeting you, my lady," she said, quite honestly and earnestly. "I hope we can talk again soon."

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I see a mountain and I wanna climb it... [OPEN]

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