open; Give me a field, give me a big sky

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli, Morrigan, Asher and you
WHAT: Catch-all for Bloomingtide
WHEN: Bloomingtide (post-5th Bloomingtide for Araceli)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: A proper catch-up for all three characters below with specific starters and some open headers, if you'd like something specific feel free to hit me up! If you'd like a backdated thing for Araceli or Morrigan, let me know and I'll sort that too, I know I've been gone for a fair bit sorry!
Araceli's threads will all be post 5th Bloomingtide when she gets back from her mission in Antiva!
For some ooc details on Morrigan things, please see here, a rookery post will go up shortly for research helpers!
Warnings for talk of violence, blood and language in Asher's threads.

Comments

[el_tybs]

He's almost tempted to offer the two of them a moment alone, but thinks differently of it since Asher is still talking to him. Besides Asher still needed healing, and with Christine taking a momentary break from it for another spell, Sam continues to work on the wounds, which were already starting to look slightly better. This might be something they did several times.

"It would be... interesting to visit these augurs? you keep talking about." The things they could learn from such a place. Everything the Chantry and the Cirlces had taught were already so heavily questioned at this point, but after hearing this? To be a mage and it being a good thing, or at least not something for them to be locked away for. There was probably more to it, but still.

Sam smiles a bit at Asher's teasing, eyes lifting to look at Christine a bit. Skipped right over the Ferelden bit and straight into Avvar territory. "You feeling at better, Asher?"

[aceso]

Christine fixes Asher with a look that says not to even joke about her going native. The very idea! She lets out a huff and gently rests his hand down at his side, patting it reassuringly before she returns to healing, eyes glowing blue once more.

"I should like to speak with them," she replies. "My studies have all been based on what we have been told in the Chant." And the observant will notice that Christine only prays over the dead, and only goes in the little chapel at Skyhold to talk with a person already there. She doesn't recite the Chant very much at all.

[hlif]

Honestly he wants them both - for as much as he teases Sam, he's a good friend, and they've bought fought together as well, and that's always what makes Asher trust people. He's got contacts that've never steered him wrong, always polite, always willing to put up with whatever nonsense Asher throws at them but they've never once fought side by side, back to back, but out in Emprise du Lion, Asher ended up fighting bears and wolves alongside both of them, and that means something, at least to him.

"They council the Thane too. That's the leader of the hold - I don't even know what anyone knows about the Avvar, my crew, and Korrin and Mal, they've known me so long they know everything." And the crew go to the holds with him, they've all considered guests at other holds the way that Asher did but just like him at honey badger, they're family. "The Chantry, Templars, Andraste, none of that has a place in the hold, none of it is even welcome in the hold. You can see why I liked getting to go visit when my parents were busy with my other siblings and the farm, and I was getting in the way. You work hard in the hold but you watch out for each other, spirit and person, and hold beast."

Nodding, he gives a real smile, grateful and relieved in response the question. "You have no idea. Rattling around in a cart isn't how to travel when you're like this." But it's not like he could actually walk so he didn't really have options.

[el_tybs]

"Honestly, they don't teach us much about the Avvar in the Circle." Probably for good reasons, too. Everything Asher has told them is completely against anything they were taught, particularly when it comes to spirits. Sure there was a similarity for not tolerating them, but how they dealt with spirits as a whole was different - hell they had their mages possessed and taught that way.

That would go over so well in the Circles and Chantry.

"Hold beast?" He can figure that Asher is referring to an animal maybe, but not quite sure what it's supposed to actually be? With Christine taking up healing again, Sam takes a moment to take a break, eyes fading back to their original amber as he does so. "You feeling hungry or anything?"

[aceso]

"Yes, I also know very little." And she's growing more interested by the moment. Speaking of the hold seems to relax Asher, and that's good for any patient, so he should continue.

Christine lifts her head briefly to nod at Sam, because she is also curious about this hold beast.

[hlif]

Bad spirits aren't tolerated, and every Avvar augur or shaman knows exactly how to force any spirit out since each and every ritual Asher's ever watched, even the mild ones, involve the spirits speaking through them. But he grew up with that, it stopped making him blink with anything more than wonder before he needed two hands to count his age.

"Ours is a honey badger, fierce bastards. Take no shit beg no man pardon. Ties us to the gods, but it lives how it chooses, it hunts since we only feed it a little. When it's well, the hold is happy and joyous. If the hold beast sickens and dies, it's an ill omen." He'd personally always thought that Ferelden adopting the mabari so strongly had to come from being descended from the Avvar, some ancestral part of them still wanting some sort of symbol even if they spoil their hounds way too much, with him being just as guilty. Then again, Bronson was in a worse state when Asher got him than he currently is now. Mention of food triggers a wave of nausea and he shakes his head, lifting a hand as much as he can to stave it off. "Water, throat feels like it'll crack."

While he still has a voice - and after he's finished coughing since he has to do that until his lungs ache - he gives Christine as close to the usual Asher grin as possible "I wrestle the honey badger. I'm sure you're going to pretend to be appalled but deep down you love it."

[el_tybs]

A honey badger. He doesn't even know what that is, but it had to be a rather resilient beast if the Avvar took it as a hold beast, and more so if Asher talked of it so fondly. Sam doesn't think too much on it though seeing as Asher asks for water, getting up from his seat to head over to the pitcher and basin off to the side.

It takes but a moment to fill a cup before he comes back, holding the cup for Asher to take, and not letting it go until he feels that the man has a good enough grip on it. The bit about wrestling the honey badger does have Sam raising a brow, and turning his eyes up to Christine. Such flirting.

[aceso]

Christine thinks she's seen pictures of badgers before, and they're rather small creatures. It makes her wonder what a honey badger is, and if it belongs to the same family or merely has the name.

She scoffs at Asher's boasting and continues working on a stubborn wound. "There is nothing alluring about wrestling wild animals," she states primly. "Now drink your water and be a good boy."