faderift | OPEN - I'm gonna do my best to take my place in the sun

WHO: Pel Ashara and YOU
WHAT: Catch-all/open post for May/Bloomingtide
WHEN: All month
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Will update with any warnings as needed.

1 - Outskirts

A grey wolf is haunting the slopes outside of Skyhold.

She doesn't appear to be stalking anything. She is simply roaming the hillside, taking in her surroundings, occasionally sniffing something out. Her yellow eyes do not search; she is only taking everything in, as if she is discovering the world.

She hears and smells you before she sees you, and isn't worried, though her ears turn to listen. If you come closer, she will look up at you, waiting for you to do something to make her reveal herself.

2 - Library

The hour is absurdly late, but she can't sleep knowing this paragraph is not written. More accurately, it has been written a great many times, but she doesn't quite like any of them.

You might find her toiling. You might find her asleep on top of her own drafts.

3 - Hot spring

For whatever reason, you have just arrived, are in whatever state of dress or undress as you are in, when the water is disturbed and Pel's head pops out. She wasn't under longer than fifteen or twenty seconds--not long enough for you to get much done, but long enough for her to, perhaps, surprise you a bit. Though she looks surprised herself, seeing you.

4 - Wildcard

Pel's Daily Schedule

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I was just writing letters to keepers I know. And details of Dirthamen, from the notes I took. I don't know how hopeful I am of publishing a second book before a new Divine is elected, but maybe if the story gets out, little stories other clans have collected might start coming out. Things that make this make sense."

She stares at her writing.

"It's impossible to disprove sadism. So...trying to disprove immortality. Starting with uthenera, maybe. I always thought uthenera could just be a sort of funeral. But In Uthenera doesn't have the word 'death' in it anywhere."

Times like these, Pel resents Solas for reminding her how ignorant she is.

"There are gatherings, are there not? To ensure that history is not... run off course by variations in expression?" There is potential in that, although as with any story there might be changes that occur even with such measures taken. Leliana muses for a moment, before pouring tea for them both - it is a potent mix of cloves, cardmon, cinnamon and ginger to invigorate. "If those hold only to the central legends of your people, then those other stories or things more newly uncovered might be invaluable."

Leliana sips her tea, considering. "Do you know what it uses in place of death? Song writers can take some liberties in their quest to avoid the literal, but thre might be clues in it." She huffs out a quiet sound that could have been a laugh. "It would be convenient if an immortal elf might stumble upon us to clarify."

"In uthenera na revas. 'In uthenera is freedom.' Most scholars translate uthenera as 'waking sleep,' but it's better translated as 'endless dream.' The idea the elves have is that it was customary for older generations to give way to the young by entering a permanent sleep. These days, In uthenera is used as a sort of funeral rite, but we're always taught the legend behind it."

"Freedom."

Repeated very quietly, pensively. Freedom seemed to be working its way into her thoughts and her conversations in more and more ways, even unexpected and without being exactly the point. She might have smirked a little, were her mood not so serious.

"If it is a permanent sleep, then one could suppose there might have been means necessary to sustain those who entered this state. In the case of the Highest One they clearly weren't trying to keep him alive. Unless you think there were any indications of desired preservation, sadistic as they may have been."

She sounds disatisfied by her own suggestion, even as she makes it.

"He was kept alive. Each piece was kept in a brazier of Veilfire. There was no rot, there was a pulse--"

Her chest catches. She can't talk about this.

"They set it up so he could be summoned back and it must have been for a reason."

"I apologise, I spoke unclearly." Leliana reconsiders a moment. "Not 'kept alive' in the sense of trying to honour him and preserve him. I had been musing more on offerings of food or clothes, anything that might suggest that which would be needed in eternal sleep. I would guess that some sustinence or care might be necessary."

Hmm.

"What do your instincts tell you?"

"My instincts aren't of very much use here. Ancient elves lived so differently from the Dalish. My instincts are all about survival--food, water, shelter. The ancient elves didn't have to think of any of that any more than those decadent nobles in Val Royeaux, by all appearances, whether they were immortal or no."

It catches up to her what Leliana means. Not a Dalish instinct, or even a Keeper's, but an historian's instinct. She frowns and flips back in her book.

"We visited that ruin in the Hinterlands. The one we suspected was an elven burial site. There were these large urns there. Their seals were long since broken, and whatever they contained was gone. We know the elves who entered uthenera were tended by servants. The urns could've held sustenance."

She finds the notes from that journey, and puts her finger on the spot talking about the various containers kept in the tomb.

"But the site in the Hinterlands was too often spoiled to know whether that sustenance was needed. The seals could've been broken by the Dreamer, or by looters."

She sits back with a sigh.

"And I'm not sure what use it would be for the Inquisition to go hunting legends of elven immortality anyway."

Edited 2016-05-20 22:22 (UTC)

"It may prove to be irrelevant," Leliana agrees, without much pause. "For the war we may never need to understand this. However, we are fighting a foe that claims immortality, through means we do not know. He is no elf, but this Highest One was somehow preserved, even in pieces. Whatever we can find to better our understanding will be of use. After the Inquisition has saved Thedas then there may be more chances to research your history and better grasp it for the sake of your people."

For now they are all of them tools set towards one purpose.

"Maybe...maybe I'm looking at it wrong. The immortality isn't strictly the least believable part of the story, but how it was lost. As if mortality is a disease one can catch. But if Hawke really killed Corypheus and he's alive again, it wouldn't have anything to do with elven magic. He's a Tevinter darkspawn magister. If anyone in Tevinter had once learned some elven magic that made them unkillable, we would definitely know it. And still be under Tevinter rule."

"It is naive to deal in definites so easily when we are dealing with such a creature." Pel might well be right, but they do not know with certainty. Besides, so much had been lost... no, Leliana will not rule it out so quickly, even if it would prove a fruitless endeavour.

She stands, then, even after only a few sips of tea. "I must get back to my work." (There are steps in the Rookery, that suggest the arrival of a bird and the shuffle to retrieve a message from its leg.) "Enjoy the tea."

She squints up at Leliana.

"All due respect, you have me here to analyze the arcane. That's my analysis. I always reckon you take mine and everyone else's and make whatever sense of it you can, but I'm no good if I don't stand by what I say."

Her eyes fall to the tea and she softens, and ducks her head.

"My lady."

OPEN - I'm gonna do my best to take my place in the sun

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