[ OPEN ] We shift and turn and swear and yearn

[fleurdesel]

WHO: Adelaide & you
WHAT: Catch All for the month
WHEN: June/Justinian
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Wine, swearing, PUPPIES, allusions to demonic violence. Prose or Brackets are fine, roll with what you like most. If you want a specific prompt hit me up on plurk @ here!

[ Courtyard -> Stables ]

When her sister wrote 'their arrival is imminent' Adelaide had not quite considered how imminent Juliette meant. Perhaps she might have been better prepared for signing off with the courier when they herd the rather rambunctious litter of several month old mabari pups to one of the few empty stalls in the barn. Playful things that they are- Dennet is a horse master not a hound master and it will be some time before the appropriate point of authority finds their way down to check on the five puppies ready for imprinting or...whatever it is these dogs do- but they will need minding until they are handed off and as she'd had the fortune to sign for them- Adelaide finds herself sitting in the barn, trying to keep the dogs from gnawing on one another, on her, or on anything valuable. Moments like this are a thorough reminder as to why she is a cat person.


[ Library ]

She can be found, as ever, at her table tucked into one of the unoccupied nooks of the library- a cold cup of tea at her elbow, a sheaf of notes she writes and reorganizes- a quill on occasion hovering over a sheet of blank paper and mimicking her notes stroke for stroke so she might produce them in duplicate. So long as she remembers exactly how she's laid out the paper, it works well enough. For questions, comments, concerns, condemnations or complications that have arisen during research she has made herself thoroughly available.


[ Return of the Attache ]

"No." That is all she has to say. No. She won't bother to stop or listen, she won't bother to mind him in the slightest- that same family attache doggedly tails Adelaide about the hold, hovering just behind with a leatherbound sheaf of papers in his hand while he awaits for some sign that she'll take them or at least listen. He spends the bulk of his time holding the odd extra book or pen or, in a singularly distressing moment, a pad of gauze against a seeping wound as she mends a patient in the healing tents. He's a step down from a personal valet- he is not meant to be dealing with literal bloody commoners and yet- this is his life. Someone please help him convince Adelaide to at least take the papers and look at them.


AFTER JUSTINIAN 19th

[ Stairs ]

After the final ritual is all said, done, and finished Adelaide finds she has a wealth of extra time due to no longer needing to spend several hours picking apart what went wrong with the last and what could go wrong with the next- and at least a few hours extra that she'd otherwise spend training with Martel in the evenings due to the incontinence that is her leg. Magic, even hers, can only do so much and the nasty break in that last fight leaves her less walking with the calm poise she's known for and more hobbling from place to place, staff less an afterthought and more a requirement for keeping her weight off her leg. At the moment she's glowering at the stones underfoot as she takes one slow, shuffling step up the stairs at a time. Her research is in the library- and eventually she would make her way there. Just- give her some time.


[ Healing Tents ]

Here, at least, there are fewer stairs. Adelaide splits her time between minding patients and beginning new notations on old research she'd set aside- tending to those she could while moving as little as possible for the first few days. Her humor is...subdued, somewhat, but that is easily explained by the weight of her work of the past months finally catching up now that she is forced to spend less time on her feet. Now and then she might be caught dozing, chin tipped to her chest, fingers still holding the page of her book in place.

Comments

[foxsays]

"You don't have a fox that knows how to rifle through your pockets." If Araceli has anything like that, Lux will off with it and leading Araceli on a merry song and dance before she can call him whatever three choice names come to mind quickest. Especially since she taught him to be as light and delicate in his thievery as her.

"But apostate sensibilities would vary very differently given that not everyone can quite agree on what, exactly, the definition of an apostate is. I know that broadly speaking that it would mean any mage outwith the Circle, and that when we say Circles we mean the Circles of the South, though perhaps excluding Nevarra in some cases. Lady Thevenet enlightened me previously on a few differences, and of course Tevinter is...distinct, we shall say for the sake of keeping things separate. The Dalish might not wholly consider themselves to be apostates given their history with the Chantry and human institutions, and that they have an entirely separate community to belong to but that would be for Ellana to speak of." Alas, life is not so neat as they both might wish to make it - Araceli has not even discussed Rivain since there is no one that she knows of so far here who is both Rivaini and a mage - but for the moment when it's just the two of them talking, they can keep things as neat as they possibly can to begin with.

"The outside has treaties and trade agreements by which to manoeuvre, the whole world has politics to cover that up," there is something of Martel in her tone because she had this conversation with him in the library too, "so the Circles having something within themselves doesn't surprise me. But some of that has to have been brought out. As you say, 'you would rather'. That means they still carry weight. Did they accomplish much? Or was it all a deflection and a game?" On the one hand, having different things means that people could argue amongst themselves wasting time instead of arguing against something, which is all too common a refrain she's heard from Korrin when it comes to votes. And yet if people ever pointed that out or said they had no say, others could turn around to say 'yes, we have this, we are allowed this' and it all begins again.

[fleurdesel]

"True enough." Whether she's speaking of the riffling fox or the apostate sensibilities, Adelaide does not mean to elaborate. "They managed to accomplish a separation and dissolution of the circles which in turn threw the world into upheaval, get a great many of us exiled or killed, and push a large number of mages that never spent much time beyond their towers into a world that feared them. So I should say they accomplish quite a bit when given cause."

It is what they accomplished most recently that is the greatest point of contention among mages. Those hat would go back, those that would double down on Chantry dogma, those that wished nothing to do with any of it, and those that wished for reformation. "What we were accustomed to frames how we work now, this is true, but the inclusion of our Dalish Council members, as ill suited to the position as Ellana seems through no fault of her own- to be Dalish surrounded by human politicians with their opinions and experiences where she seems to have little cannot be easy- is as vital as the inclusion of Circle mages. We are all of us apostates after a fashion, now. There are no Circles. What comes next must come from our hands and that means taking into account alternative perspectives. Convincing one another of that, now. That is the trick. Especially when some of our apostate members are...stubborn, like Korrin. Not to say the rest are any less so. Vivienne in particular, in her own way, is loathe to give ground."

As a political moderate it has caused more than it's fair share of headaches for Adelaide.

[foxsays]

"Is there anything at all you would deem worthy of salvaging? Allow me to explain." Settling herself, she sits up straighter, her hands upon the table to smooth out a few pieces of paper to help draw the picture. "When a ship at last comes to harbour, listing badly when she has been ravaged by storms, or because she hit the rocks and tore open her hull then there comes a time when repairs can no longer be done. There is a place for those ships where they are left to be reclaimed by the sea. Birds will nest in them, barnacles cover them, crabs scuttle, the fish and squid dart; there is much life still. But before that, we still take whatever we can from the ship so that they might be put to good use somewhere else, so that all is not lost entirely even if say the figurehead stands vigil in a great hall where men and ladies might speak of their love of the sea, and where the wood that once went across the waves now makes the roof over a head, or the cradle for a child."

The fraternities as they were? She wouldn't keep them, and there are some she would cut and cut again until there is nothing left of them but memories of how the world was once but there are others that she has read of, that give her pause because she looks and finds a use in them. If worded the right way. The smile for Adelaide is very gentle, it has every appearance of being real and it's an advantage of Adelaide not knowing her quite as well as say Ellana would because Ellana might not be so good at politics, but she knows Araceli smiling honestly.

And on the subject of Ellana, she does consider the matter. "Are there any who would aid her? Honestly aid her without trying to call in some favour or play an advantage? Ellana has always been an apostate though, but I would imagine that to some, no matter what you might say, you would still be Adelaide LeBlanc of the White Spire, no? And Enchanter Vivienne would be one who carries a great deal of weight; a companion of the Herald, someone from the Court, a First Enchanter and I believe that she is a Loyalist too, I am correct in saying that?"

She knows she's correct, she is simply being polite, that's how this is done. Perhaps it will help her find out where Adelaide sits so she can plan out her little map better too. She will know the cards in her hand before she even tries to guess what the opponents might be playing with.

[fleurdesel]

"Well yes-" She begins- stops, and waits through Araceli's explanation. One she is certain there is nothing else that is to be said, she continues. "The point of contention among the fraternities surrounds what ought to be done with magic, how it ought to be used, ideological and ethical differences that range from intensely pragmatic to entirely political. On an individual level I have known Isolationists willing to step into the shoes of their Libertarian brethren simply because it was the easiest way to move in a direction to achieve their desires. It varies. We can say 'there will be no more fraternities' and it will do nothing. Things are too deeply ingrained. They provide a quick shorthand for what you stand for in your view of magic. A Loyalist wishes to remain true to the letter of Chantry law, an Aequitarian the spirit of the law while the letter can, frankly, go hang itself. I could have done more for the villages plagued and struck by illness were I not shackled by the letter of Chantry law."

Such was the way of things- and such need not be the way of things in the future. "From what I understand Ellana has been keeping company with Councilor Thenevet to learn more of politics and to better articulate her point of view in terms the rest of us can understand- that can go, actually. There is a time and place for dense language and abstract concepts with their associated jargon- a frank discussion of Mage politics is not it. Save that for Academia. Whatever we do must be argued and spoken in such a way that all of us can contribute without additional education. I am, on occasion, frustrated on her behalf- Vivienne, despite her actions in Androal's Reach-"

Something Adelaide shall not forget nor entirely forgive any time soon -"Has not officially claimed a place with any fraternity, in an attempt to remain politically fluid. It had, up until the dissolution of the circles, worked for her. Now that her position is more or less irrelevant she wishes for the old order to regain what she's lost in the chaos. Many Loyalists do."

[foxsays]

"So for the fraternities themselves, we could say guidelines rather than a code." Good, that's good, there's more room to twist and turn there, more room to breathe and well, Araceli's entire existence within the queensguard is owed to a loophole exploited brazenly but still carefully so she has experience of that personally. She listens carefully, the way she did when she took notes for the rifters because it's such a part of her that she doesn't think about it, same as breathing or blinking. "You were an Aequitarian then? Or if such things are being counted, as I am sure they are because that is the way of all worlds where everyone likes to be able to put a neat little label on us. You are fortunate, yours are far more polite than many I have earned." Araceli usually lets them roll off her because she knows who she is but sometimes? Sometimes they have managed to worm beneath her skin like a barb, like the shot she hasn't always managed to clean completely from a wound. Apostate and maleficar and abomination and demon are all ugly words but the words they use about her, her mother, her father, all as if they are to be a slap in her face? Well, a fraternity name is still a neater thing, and it can still be used perhaps.

There is also the Chantry, a thing that she thinks of as something bloated, the corpses that bob out at sea with gulls on their backs, but she won't say that to someone like Adelaide when she doesn't know her nearly well enough. Adelaide wouldn't appreciate a scandalous sort of jest even if she worded it just so, they don't know one another well enough for that. But the Chantry is leaderless, rudderless.

"Letters are letters. Letters can change. Inflection, intonation, context. A clever tongue, a clever mind. I am sure the Loyalists have used that to their advantage many times," is all she says instead. Perhaps it is time someone used it against them, is what she does not but the spirit of it is there, if Adelaide chooses to grasp it. But then they are just two ladies talking, younger learning from older, seeking to help the woman she loves a little better.

"I am glad to hear of that, to see that there are more examples of nobility throughout Thedas who do not sit idly by. But forgive me, I am unfamiliar with Andoral's Reach? Much of my study is still catching up: politics, geography, culture, heraldry, there was a great deal too that I had to make sense of when I arrived and I'm sure plenty got lost in the shuffle." But it's good to know that her status is not actually so secure as it may seem then, though she is very much the master of the Game and that it's to be expected but she smiles, grateful for the information. "She stands to lose the most if the world decides that the old way should be washed away with the tide, to become one of the rabble, how dreadful." This time she doesn't bother disguising the roll of her eyes because that's something she hates, and since Adelaide knows Korrin, she'd be able to guess that Korrin wouldn't take up with someone who'd approve of a social climber in that respect.

[fleurdesel]

"A sad fact of this conflict is that while a great deal of the roots are in history that is biased from either side- the inciting events are recent enough that finding a clear account of what happened is almost impossible." No one has time to write what is happening while they are being hunted and killed, more often than not.

"It is not something often discussed. Those that know, know. Those that do not? Don't ask if only due to our not bringing it up often. The war prompted a great many clashes and conflicts- many know of them but do not truly know them. Even I can only speak for the events at the Spire that I witnessed personally, much the same for Andoral's Reach. It is a fort, long abandoned, far to the north. Somewhere many circle mages traveled to for sanctuary when their towers fell into chaos. A few months after the circles were dissolved we were a few thousand strong. Hiding, afraid, trying to plan for the next step." It is difficult to detach herself from that time- shaken from the events at the Spire, gutted by every familiar face that did not manage to make it half so far, the lack of any manner of word-

The continued promise of retribution from templars and seekers alike should they march upon Andoral's Reach. It was not a restful time.

"We gathered, then, to vote. Beg for clemency and return to the Circles, rescind the final action of the last meeting and vote of the College of Magi- or to stay in Andoral's Reach and prepare for a siege. It is no Skyhold, to be certain, but we would have been able to last quite some time with adequate preparation. The Loyalists voted against- a few smaller fraternities threw in behind them- and none of their voices were half so loud as Madame de Fer's. Calling for reason. For responsible action. They might be merciful if we turn ourselves in, that was the thought. Libertarians, Isolationists, and Aequitarians voted to hold to fight for our freedom- or rather our representatives did. I was preoccupied with the wounded and the apprentices that made it to the fort. Keeping myself busy, keeping to my code of ethics by using my magic to heal rather than waste time bickering over a choice that had already been made. I thought the vote would go through and we would settle in for a siege." Needless to say? She was wrong.

"We voted. Fighting won by a fair margin- but slim enough that the Loyalists were arguing. We had all of us come through the wilds to seek out sanctuary- some from towers ordered annulled- many of us having lost peers, students, friends to the fighting already- and because of this disagreement in politics, the 'True Loyalists' that voted against fighting rallied under Vivienne- and there was a skirmish." Killing each other over political choices rather than simply leaving as was their right. "I would have thought we would have been tired enough of blood and death. I was mistaken. Whether or not she has claimed a fraternity- what she means to do, what she wants? Is obvious enough. Where we stand with her is obvious enough. I do not know if she stirred the loyalists to violence or if they feared for their lives- but I do know they rallied to her and she has long held a reputation of being merciless. Make of that what you will."

[foxsays]

"Events easily forgotten when so many have been lost, and when such words are all too easily twisted." There are lots of mages in Skyhold, but she cannot imagine that it holds nearly as many mages as there once were. How ill-equipped so many of them must be to survive, and she allows the mask to crack, to let the sorrow show when she has to force her jaw to clench, her bottom lip not to wobble when it wishes to. Her eyes are full of sympathy when she looks to Adelaide though, a pain that isn't hers but Araceli has only ever known freedom and she wants that for them, and though she's a rifter, she has tools they do not simply by not being a mage.

So she listens. Readies herself for what she will hear the way she does when she looks over the edge of a building or the mast of a ship, letting herself fall without bracing. She will accept what comes as her unmarked hand (not because she is afraid to reach out but she wants a hand that doesn't mark them as different, wants a hand that is rough from handling her rapiers and lockpicks and from climbing, that always carries the scent of her hair oils and Korrin's horn balm) reaches for Adelaide's if she wants it. It is never a weakness to reach out and to offer to help another with a burden.

They must have lost many along the way. Those who wished to take their chances. Others who were not strong enough after a life cooped up, or too afraid to keep going, too traumatised perhaps; how many of them now have scars no one can see at all, when people open their mouths to say whatever ignorant thought flies into their head, without thinking that they too are people, that they have suffered. She checks her anger, feels it simmer low in her belly where it will boil over later into angry cursing and swearing, things kicked and thrown, the tears she will dissolve into when she is alone but for Korrin and Lux.

"Her voice rings out and blood follows." Araceli's voice is dangerously soft, choked nearly - by rage or grief, even she can't be sure which has a tighter grip on her at present. "You had all voted, the majority - slim, but still a majority won, and then rally beneath her banner. To see more blood after all that?"

Adelaide did not use her voice. She notes that. Yes, she was healing but well, that isn't something Araceli will forget, it is something she will tuck away to keep safe when she has need of it later because she mentions a code of ethics that she will have to come to but Vivienne is what matters, Vivienne and Loyalists and how much blood must there be, how much blood do they all need. She shakes her head, swallowing the bile scorching her throat, flexing the sudden ache in her fingers.

"Thank you for telling me that, I could not have been easy to relive such a day but...well, if Vivienne did then her recounting would have been very different, and no one else sitting upon the Council would have been present for it. Her voice could have rung out to stop more bloodshed too; think what it might have meant then - we Loyalists will not fight our fellows, we will seek another way. Or to have calmed them, to have risen above it all. She has shown her hand." Perhaps she already had if she had a reputation for being merciless, and from Araceli's readings about the Orlesian court, for a mage to have risen so very high she must certainly have. "Perhaps she hoped that her Loyalists would be fervent enough to be victorious and that she would have fewer opposing voices left at the end of it."

Leandra would despise her. Leandra would have all the guard destroy every single thing she held dear for all the world to see and leave her with nothing as they calmly walked away. Araceli cannot do that (not yet, perhaps not ever) and her blood boils at the thought--

"There would have been so many children, so many not even my age, and I am not yet one-and-twenty," a whisper, one that she can't help, staring at Adelaide for a long moment before she shakes her head again - what else can you say in the face of what she has been told?

[fleurdesel]

"You see, now, why so many gathered at Redcliffe, hoping for something better? If we cannot hold a fort against our own, if we cannot trust our own kind- how are we to know we might stand against a siege? Some stayed. The Isolationists fled and I do not blame them. I remained to tend to the wounded." And then word of the Inquisition. Of someone taking the mages as allies without the questionable mystery that had been at Redcliffe. Without quite so impossible a walk to make with ill, injured, and young. It had been sensible enough to risk the journey. After what happened at Haven- to know that the world might look upon mages and how they helped?

It is such a little thing, that hope. So terribly fragile. But what other option did she have other than to go where she and her students might be the most safe? Than to go where other mages gathered and pray that, perhaps, she was not the only one of the Spire to find her way there?

That trembling tension, that kind ache does not go unnoticed. Adelaide extends a hand to rest it on top of Araceli's, some of the cool mask of distance required to recount the matter softening. That Araceli is young is easy to note with her love of life and her willful energy- but she had not thought her quite so young. "We hid. I hid them as best I could, as many as I was able to find. Those of us weary of fighting- we did what we could. But it would be a lie to say there were not smaller bodies upon the pyres than there ought to have been in the days that followed. That, and the Spire- that is why I put my faith in the Inquisition. In what we do with the Council. To prevent such things from happening again. We must do better, be better. Or what is the point of even trying?"

[foxsays]

"Hope does not keep a belly full, believe me I know that well enough from home, and if any of you had tried to steal, you would not have been good at it, not even with magic, or those who were the quietest, the sneakiest." She doesn't say it unkindly but when you've been a thief for a long time then you know how hard it is to do it, and stealing food is sometimes one of the most difficult things of all. People never seem to think it is but it is so jealously watched. And when you are very hungry, you're so clumsy, and you can never get very far before you curl around your prize. She's seen too many do it and had to step in somehow. She doesn't ask of the Isolationists, not when she has the feeling it would be too cruel right now. Some might have slipped in, some might forge their own path, some might be dead.

More likely they will be wondered about for years, picked at like an old wound that never gets to heal. Never before has she been so grateful that the rulers of so very long ago in her home had the sense to hash out terms to end war, terms that aren't perfect but better than this. Skirmishes at sea, plots and intrigues, assassins but not so much death that she wants to put her hands over her ears and curl beneath the covers to scream until her throat is raw.

Swallowing carefully, she blinks slowly until the itch in her eyes is gone, another little breath through her nose that stings but she manages. "And yet now you must sit on the Council with Vivienne in every session and appear as if all is well because there are so many who would jump on any chance to widen a single crack or division if they ever saw it." Said as if she knows how these things work, because she does, because she knows how that all works from the guard and watching Leandra's council sessions as they all must with carefully neutral expressions. "If I can help in any way...I do not know what I can do but I don't want this. More death. More pain. I don't want all of that to have been for nothing. For all the work that all of you are doing to go to waste. I want all of you to be free as I have been my entire life to live it as I see fit, with good judgement to do right by those around me the same as any other person in the world. There will always be good or bad people who might take advantage of others, or seek to do harm, to be born with magic...if you are to serve man, you should not serve as if serving a sentence in a cell."