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

[foxsays]

Religion always has a way of complicating things even more than magic for her simply because religion doesn't even exist in the margins like it does in Thedas. Worship is worship. The sea is their blood, they remember it, live it, all things came from the sea that they return to one day, all things are a cycle and there is always salt so you can stand bitterness when you must because that is the sea you are tasting that taught you to swim before you even took a breath.

"I don't think you could be anything at all but yourself." It's a compliment, as much as an observation and an agreement, a smile tugging at her lips again where it had disappeared from trying to keep up with the words and the names as foreign to her as shores she's never glimpsed. It doesn't surprise her either, to hear of more wars, indeed she might be beginning to think she's the only one that comes from a place that learned to war once and never again, that the cost was too high then and that the headaches over treaties are still worth it rather than cleaning the blood that comes or planning so many funerals, singing so many dirges. "What we believe matters more than the thing itself in the end," she says with the sort of casual almost-arrogance of the young, the people who can still buy into their own bravado when they go racing across the rooftops and believe that yes, they will catch that ledge that really does seem too far if they stop to think about it.

She would ask what a Zemoch is - if that wouldn't spoil it - but she turns with his hand, listening intently before she laughs brightly. "And there you go - you say these serious things that I could weigh with scales then you-- you do that!" Already she is fond, smiling at him like she does her 'uncles' on the docks, the ones with stories like so much salt.

"We learned the way of thinking, treaties, and trade agreements, all those things where I come from after our one war. It works. There are little skirmishes here and there, usually out at sea because sailing gets the blood up but politics is bloody enough if you slice it just right for anyone I think."

(She knows. But more satisfying to destroy someone's standing and walk away than to gut someone in all honesty unless there's truly no other option.)

[apostasia]

He wears his years well, but the small smile conjured by the impossible immortality of the young - that is an old man's smile, a sort of gentleness that can only be wrought by horror. He has much to say about what belief means and matters; that is not such a pretty tale as this very edited account of the Bhelliom's recent history, and he permits himself no more than fleeting, wry warmth.

(What could he have been, if not this--? He takes the compliment for what it is. It is a sweet thing for her to say, and needs no tainting by him.)

"Ah. Yes. Politics. As a word, I sometimes think it no more than a bit of spit-polish upon the inclination of us all to maneuver and manipulate. Our treaties and our trade agreements and do you see how it always is," the rolling drawl, always, sounding less cynical than sort of curiously affectionate, "that we must fight one another - by this means or by that, with a sword or over a table - and fight against ourselves to serve our interests? Is it not better, to work together? Of course, we all say. Smiling."

With the knives behind their backs.

"And," seamlessly picking up the thread of his story, "so it was in King Aldreas's Elenia. An ugly period of history that I am obliged, unfortunately, to claim for my own. I was a knight in his court, once." He turns the Pandion medallion under his fingers and he doesn't hide the contempt of the memory. Aldreas -

"It is the duty of a Pandion Knight to serve his God and his King, usually," with a bit of candour, "in that order. Holy Mother Church will throw her weight about." He fingers the chain a moment, then slides the medallion back around his neck; some tension he was likely not even aware of dissipates as it takes its safe place. "Sparhawk's Pandions have always been rather the black sheep of the family, which I suspect came in very useful when creating a schism between the first Sparhawk to serve Aldreas as a champion and the weak King himself. Even our brother knights, in other Elene nations, were prepared to believe all manner of things of us."

His smile is crooked - "A rod for our own back. We started most of the rumours. It is astonishing what a man might tell you to ensure you don't even start doing those awful things he's heard you'll do."

[foxsays]

Belief is easy when the world has always loved you; Thedas is the first time when she has ever had cause to doubt, when she has had to question it. Belief has always brought her to where she needed to be: into the world, filled her pockets with gold, never wounded her severely, into a position to help the people who need it. Being a bard is not quite the same but she can fashion a mask over that girl same as fashioning a strong hard shell over that softer girl to keep her safe for one day, should the rifts see fit to take her home again.

"Sweat and ink are easier to clean than blood. But fights have different rules with what honour demands, politics likes to forget that and allows people to wander around until they find the loopholes they can slip through, pulling them tight behind them. Finding all the places people forget about too," this is what she does because no one knows Castileos better than a thief and a fence, than a captain's daughter, where she can find a seat at those tables easily. "Not everyone walks the same, or smiles the same. But there are times when it's as fun as any duel, when you get to see the look in a man's eyes when he knows he has lost. It makes dinner conversation with dreadful people less dull, at the very least."

If you are technically the knife, do you still hold one behind your back as well, or do you carry it under your tongue too?

"They are not one and the same? Forgive me; we worship the waves, and so we believe that our blood is the sea, and that our monarchs have that blood in them." She won't distract with the mercourt and the titles when it's his story but the idea of that separation is honestly so jarring to her, especially when it does allow Leandra the authority in the end when all the voices howl.

Her smile is knowing, curling at the corners. "A word in the right or wrong ear is worth its weight in gold. Rumours have a way of growing arms and legs too. I would guess that some of yours are likely to have grown teeth as well."

[apostasia]

"It is sometimes a harsher separation than others," Martel allows; a particularly pious King bending knee to the holy throne, perhaps - a less pious one refusing to see Sarathi's messengers. "Aldreas, for instance, paid great heed to churchmen. The more corrupt, the better. The Primate, Annias, came within inches - I daren't speculate just how many, if you take my meaning - of legally justifying the marriage of brother to sister for his King, and he could have ridden such influence all the way to the Archprelate's throne, had it worked."

It wouldn't have been a clean path, but -

It was never going to be a clean path. Annias had been a good man, once; Martel does not permit the thought to become a comparison. Especially not when he's just made an incest-related dick joke at the fool's expense.

"It was a perilous state my King left his kingdom in, left to a slip of a girl got on a wife he never wished for. Ripe for misfortune. Not an entirely dissimilar misfortune as that we face here, in truth. Corypheus seeks godhood; an ancient god, misbegotten and awful in the truest, awe-struck sense of the word, sought freedom and dominion." He rolls the jewel in his fingertips and says -

"I had long since had my crisis of faith and been rather firmly shown the door, and my brother - in arms," for the sake of clarification, though the distinction seems meaningless by the tone in which he says it first, "Sparhawk-the-most-recent, he had had the misfortune of offending the very easily-offended King, and was exiled. Ehlana held her throne with her fingernails, I daresay, without her champion. And when poison that no mortal means could cure flowed in her veins and my lady, my little mother, kept her alive with only her own will and the strength of a dozen knights behind her -"

He presses the jewel into Araceli's hands.

"Rather an ideal time to remember the existence of something beyond mortal means, wouldn't you say? You have that, darling. I'll tell you the rest of the story one of these days."

[foxsays]

It's impossible to keep the wrinkle out of her nose at that, not simply at the very obvious but because at her heart she's a decent sort, one that does believe in those with power using it to do good, or having it taken from their grasp. If their fingers are broken in the process, then they should have done something when they had the chance, same as the ones left with nothing who didn't notice when it all crumbled about them. "I am sure that here they will claim that their rulers and their Chantry have much cleaner hands than all that," she murmurs, just arch enough should anyone happen past that only Martel can see the arch of her brow. "It cannot be coincidence after all that their Grand Cathedral and their Grand Game sit close enough to kiss."

And she has delved deep into the history of the Chantry as part of her studies, as well as having the rare fortune to run into a priest of Tevinter for the brief time he was within the walls of Skyhold. Araceli forgets very little and there is much about the Chantry that reminds her of something rotting from the inside out.

(Best to keep that from the Nightingale, a little secret, she doesn't need to know all.)

"You paint yourself in the margins." Not everyone where she comes from tells the story as if they were in the thick of it but usually that's how it is; they are the beating heart, they are the breath in the lungs of it, they are carrying it with them from port to port, over their brandy and rum in the tavern over the drums and mournful guitar notes, with the blue-grey smoke curling in the air as they play their hand. A quiet observation but-- "I wish I could meet your little mother, though I am sure she is needed where she is, in such dire times."

She doesn't want to think about being needed at home, but home is at peace at least, and she closes her fingers over the jewel with a smile.

"I will always be glad to hear any tale you wish to tell, and I hope I might tell one of my own, though mine are not quite so grand. You have no idea how glad I am that at last we have finally truly met."

[apostasia]

Her observation nets her the side edge of a smile, something terrible and knowing and a remnant of a serious young man who had not yet been disillusioned about his place in the world. Who had seen the corruption and still believed -

It was never a crisis of faith, but perhaps in time it became a crisis of belief. Martel has never had the luxury of losing faith in the gods who have bartered him amongst them like a plaything, who have abandoned him to the bed he made for himself, who answered and ignored his prayers. What is this life but proof he is forsaken? It is no kindness, and were it -

He can think of many who should have cheated death before him.

The smile softens and turns private; he presses her hand once to acknowledge her last words and says, "My lady is where she ought to be." A better and happier ending for Sephrenia and Vanion than he'd ever have dreamed, and perhaps Vanion wouldn't credit it, but he thinks she at least might understand how glad he is to know. Mother and father to a generation of stupid boys with swords, asked to give more of themselves than any two people ever should have had to, pushed past limits that would have killed the lesser; he told her in what should have been his final moments that he died with the only two people he'd ever loved and he thinks she knew it was a lie.

But if Aslade was not to be insulted with his apologies, Vanion has no need of his well-wishes.

"I've a few less grand to share, as well, you know. A young lady once kicked me out of a tree. Planted her feet right here--" his hands on his chest, "--and kicked me like a fucking mule, delicate flower that gladly would I swear to all and sundry she always was."

[foxsays]

Noted, Martel, for some later date. In a place where there's wine and more comfortable furniture, a little less foot traffic too; Skyhold has plenty of places where the rest of the world would seem to disappear and when you're telling a story just right, when you know how to still keep an eye and ear open? You know when someone else unwanted is leaning in.

"Still, she must be missed. Certain people leave a void even where they should never truly be." How many times does she turn for the queensguard because they've been a part of her body for a year so much so that it's not so much missing just a limb but missing her senses, her tongue, parts of herself that made them this new sharp yet sleek thing that moved so easily that it stopped the breath of every noble that had to deal with them. Leandra should never come to Thedas when she has her throne, her realm, when she keeps the peace throughout the world yet what she might accomplish here…

Dangerous thoughts. The Fade is shaped by them, their dreams, they are all pieces--- (Why can't she remember the face of the boy who told her that, it still troubles her that she only recalls the jagged fragments of him, the bits that make her pause and try to fit everything together in alarming ways, wondering what their enemy will do when he learns. He will. Skyhold leaks faster than a hull dashed upon the rocks limping home with her hold full of gold and spices.)

"Now there is the sort of young lady that should always be." A smile to say she recognises a piece of herself because there are no trees but there are balconies, docks, rooftops, ships. Lots of places to kick boys from. "Ladies must always have their secrets, that is our province, no one would ever believe any of us capable of such a thing," she rises because well, she's stolen a lot of his time and he's a busy man, and she's a busy girl (Korrin will think she's fallen asleep, or more worryingly that she's forsaken her for the intricacies of how to insult your host by how one sets the table for dinner), "and then well, suddenly a man finds himself flat on his back looking up in awe as it should always be. A pleasure, senor Martel, we shouldn't wait so long to do this again."