lost myself and I am nowhere to be found

[fightingale]

WHO: catch-all for Leliana, Ruby & Herc
WHAT: all sorts! some open prompts for each, as well as closed starters.
WHEN: throughout Bloomingtide
WHERE: various
NOTES: Depression, discussion of death, alcohol, potential violence, others to be added as necessary. If we're threading and something comes up in a tag, feel free to add a warning to the subject line.

Starters in the comments! If you'd like a personalised thing then just prod me via pp (@karmacharging) or pm and I will whip something up C:

Comments

[fightingale]

"A world with only humans sounds so simple. But... every group will find someone to abuse and tread down. I do not imagine your world is any less complex than our own."

Leliana is quiet a moment, watching Araceli before she continues her reply. "There is no need to shame yourself. Your training is begun now - lamenting the spending of your time will not serve you well." Quiet, not quite gentle, but something close to it.

"Would you be interested in taking on more projects? Or is that a more general observation." It could be hard to say, and she would rather be forthright and clear with her student - indeed, with any of her scouts.

[foxsays]

"Nobility and commonfolk within my own country at the very least, a queen that would see greater accountability, higher taxes paid by those who can afford them, education for all, opportunities not withheld simply because the blood in someone's veins can't be traced back to someone with a title. Reasons why she employed me. To have someone common who understood. Other countries have their own problems like that and others I'm sure you could imagine but they like to shame us the way you tried to warn me I believe. They think my people very loose, if you take my meaning. Our beliefs strange and odd - we are more like the Dalish in our way than the Chantry, we worship the sea and the moon, not a singular being, we hold to that." And though she does her best to hide it since she should be able to, there's a little flicker in her voice. She's homesick. She is trying but she misses how her hair smelled of saltspray.

Nodding, she clears her throat before she continues. "I had thought that perhaps there might be a way I might be able to assist the cause of the mages. I have become very close to them, and I believe theirs is a cause worth fighting for. The elves too but, as I am a human, I think it would be presumptuous of me to volunteer myself to speak unless asked by them, and there is Beleth Ashara. I wouldn't wish to step on her toes." It's hardly a secret that Araceli has plenty of mage friends after all, or that magic isn't something terrifying to her, in fact it's a strange and marvelous thing when it wasn't ever real until arriving in Thedas. But this is only her first tentative suggestion, to see if it's possible to help with something that lies close to her heart. "I will defer to your judgement, and I will always be happy to go on whatever assignments you need me to go on as I would for my queen at home, but I would not see them locked away. Not when they are fighting just as hard as everyone else."

[fightingale]

"You queen sounds a wise woman." Extremely ambitious, by Thedosian standards, and it hardly seems likely that such proposals were not (at least at one point) a far reach in any world. Such goals are not achieved overnight, and Araceli was amongst those trusted to carry them out, it seems. "Those who are different are often deemed the lesser. People always are so keen to look for difference, rather than what draws us all together. The common threads are what matters, and from there the differences can make us mightier."

But she is rambling, as much as someone with her inclination to economy in phrase ever does with those she works with. It is socially that she speaks more poetically, and the people who see that are few and far between.

What Araceli says next is not wholly a surprise, Leliana would have to be willfully blinkering herself to be ignorant of her attachment to Korrin (to Sina, to other mages within the Inquisition) and doubly so when Araceli is one of her bards. "I am pleased to hear it, on both counts. Of the two of you I would sooner see Beleth's focused placed on the elves and related missions." She pauses, then, and allows herself to digress. "In the past I have known bards who work together for a common cause, only to turn on one another for personal gain and for survival. I do not wish it to be so with you and Beleth. You are both of you my students, but your goals are shared. Your survival is shared. Differences may come and go, there may be times when you deem each other insufferable, but you are not rivals and my agents work together, always."

Which she imagines does not need to be said. She wanted to say it all the same, never mind that Araceli and Beleth have not displayed any element of rivalry that she is aware of - better those dangerous thoughts do not take root, that the possibility does not drive its way in and form cracks in them as surely as ivy can to stone.

"Regarding both mages and elves," she continues, "they are causes close to my heart. There are those in Thedas who would undercut the efforts of those who have come to us through rifts by dismissing you as demons, and work with mages in particular as a reason to work all the harder against you and them."

Her expression does not darken, but she smoothes her hands over a map of Thedas as she rolls it out across her desk. "Better we silence them before it comes to that, I think."

[foxsays]

"She planned a marriage agreement that finally secured a beneficial trade agreement for ore and gems our country is poor in when she was fourteen. She does not lack for ambition. She's a very young queen; only two years older than I am now, but she has a very different way of doing things, even to her own mother. But it helps that we have had no war in living memory. It simplifies a great many things in life that we all strive very hard to never repeat that mistake. I get the worst of it in what people think if they know what my parents are, or what they think they know what they do. Or simply being a common girl. Looking like this." A pretty girl, with a pretty face, quick to smile and with a generous helping of hip and bust? Leliana called it correctly on that rooftop, but she's weathered that storm so many times that sometimes she doesn't really feel the words until after, when she's alone, in the bath or unlacing the corset. Sometimes it's like that. Only feeling the wound when you peel off the armour and realise that yes, a blow got through after all.

"In the queensguard, there are six of us including myself. Traditionally there were five, one from each other nation - it dates back to an agreement ending the war, since my country ended it peacefully, that as a show of gratitude, a noble of similar age to the ascending monarch of appropriate gender would guard her. I was included through a loophole to make it six. We take our own missions when we must, or we work in smaller groups but we have to be one body, one mind, always working for her. One day I hope to have time to explain it to you fully, it...it's a process. A bit like Orlais but also not." Which is a long way of saying that she understands working together both on the same mission but also for the overall goal. She's close to them, closer than she imagines Leliana suspects, same as she is to her queen in a way that would likely sound so absurd: six guards and a queen all in a bed, and the prince-consort is perfectly happy with this arrangement, given that he only wishes for his wife's friendship, and that they're at the begetting of heirs stage so early into their marriage yet.

Araceli isn't entirely sure what she makes of Beleth yet. She's reserving judgement for the moment because they have to work together and she can be perfectly professional - she's done this before, so many people who never know how much Araceli despises them because she knows how to put on the right face. Beleth hasn't sought her out, but rumours about the Templar situation reached her and Araceli is still wary. She's still a rifter, after all. And there's every chance she might be used to hurt Korrin, or the mage council.

Besides, she has more catching up to do in her studies in general.

"Silencing them is the only option?" Her tone is carefully level, perhaps curious. "There are natives after all that have shards, and at the celebrations during First Day there were several at the more formal gathering who believed I was related to an Antivan dowager. Even much of the culture is the same. And bards often do not go by their true names when they are working. You are the only person who would be able to weigh the pros and cons with me."

[fightingale]

"Silencing them," she says, with a quiet severity, "is the most effective option. The extinguishing of their voices will render others hesitant to take up the same cause. For you there might be a simple deception to play, but in the presence of Antivans? And what of those who don't have so easy a solution?"

No, Leliana shakes her head. "Efficiency is crucial in a war, Araceli. You have had no war in living memory, you say - then there are elements to this that you cannot know. We must be swift. Time is always key, and Corypheus' forces are always moving against us."

Araceli is young, an idealist. She lives in a world where she is one of the queensguard, yes, but it is not Thedas. It might well be a softer type of world, more giving, or it could be equally ruthless - if it is the latter, Araceli perhaps has not grasped all of it. She is as much a child as Leliana was at her age, perhaps moreso.

[foxsays]

"I suppose you must be used to that here," she says after a moment, not disagreeing but it's sad, this world she finds herself in but she can move, and change, can fashion a new skin about herself. "Has Thedas ever stopped to draw breath? Where I come from you play the hand you are dealt, and this is my hand now, fighting a war instead of keeping the peace."

Her gaze is drawn to the map, all the borders pressing against each other, the attacks at every angle; home sprawls out so much more, you at least have plenty of time to prepare, to know. Castileos alone sprawls farther than the countries they've named, even if some of the islands are so tiny they don't even have names and get swallowed by the tides at certain times of the year. "I had wondered, is there anything to suggest the enemy has knowledge of people arriving through rifts?"

It isn't something she wanted to ask when she still counted herself as a rifter and sought a collective identity, but if she's going to do this, she has to be aware of the risks, of the targets she paints upon not only herself but the backs of others who might not even be aware of it. Although by now, surely some word has to have reached the enemy by now since they've been accompanying the Inquisition for months but it's always been the Inquisition finding them at rifts, never Corypheus or his followers.

So she straightens her shoulders, standing just a little taller. "I am willing to do what must be done for the Inquisition, to stand up and be counted. Whatever it takes, especially if it will keep safe those I have come to care for, and the causes they are working so hard for."