open; Dry your smoke-stung eyes

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open
WHAT: Post-Rivain catch-up, gifts for friends, general open in and around Skyhold things
WHEN: August (timey-wimey if needed)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: High likelihood of Dairsmuid being discussed so annulments etc. Will update if/when needed. If you'd like a starter let me know but feel free to make your own!

Comments

[arlathvhen]

Beleth waves a little at Araceli as she sees the other girl peek over the edge. Then she smiles, and holds up the sack of food. "I got the dess--Oh, hmm. I can come up." She looks up at where Araceli is stationed, then at the food, but her mouth is set determinedly, and the Dalish adjusts her scarf, sticking the sack in the back of it, leaving her hands free to climb up to Araceli's perch. She moves slower than normal, slower than Araceli probably does--but she has some valuable cakes, and if they get smooshed, it will be terrible.

No cake crisis occurs as she pulls herself up onto the roof, gently removing the sack from behind her.

"Desserts and talking, yes? I figured I'd get it for you, it sounds like you've earned a rest."

[foxsays]

If it's needed, Araceli offers a hand up once she's tucked her lute out of the way. Making sure it won't get scratched since keeping a lute in pristine condition is surely the sign of a top notch bard even if it's not explicitly stated anywhere.

"Was everything well during my absence? I haven't had the chance to catch up with the mages from Rivain needing to be settled." Hopefully Leliana won't mind: she debriefed as expected but anything else that she might've been doing during Leliana's illness hasn't been happening. The mages trust Araceli, so she's more than happy and willing to run around as their go-between for whatever they need until they're all comfortable enough not to rely on her so heavily, and even then she'll probably check in just the same way she does with the Kestrels. Araceli has research to do, they have questions about rifters.

It all works out.

"And you Beleth, you are well?" Since they didn't part on the best of notes.

[arlathvhen]

Beleth accepts the offered hand, and once she's settled in, she begins unpacking the sack. It's full of little macarons and puff pastries, various tasty desserts. She has no idea how a qunari in Antiva learned how to bake these, but does it really matter? He does, and he did. She pops one in her mouth as Araceli speaks, thinking on how to answer her.

"Quiet," Is the announcement, once she's finished with her food. Because she's not a fucking savage (as much as some claim otherwise). "It goes quietly. People prepare for Orlais, there was a snowfight, I feel like...It's the calm before the storm. Everyone's getting prepared for whatever is going to hit us next." It's a grim prediction, but Beleth has always considered herself realistic, and she knew the quiet would not last, not when they are fighting a war.

"I'm doing alright," Has anything of any real interest happened to her since then? Only a few small, very personal things. One thing occurs to her--if she has to tell Leliana at some point, she might as well tell Araceli, too.

"I'm going to kill a man." She announces it calmly, as she picks out a macaron. "A specific man, I mean, not just anyone. I've got most of the details worked out, I just have to, ah. Ask Sister Nightingale." Which will be the toughest part of the entire ordeal, she's sure.

[foxsays]

Lux trots over because he's greedy and a pig, and Araceli tends to let him try anything she's eating; palace life agreed too much with him, not that anyone but three others not including Araceli know of this, so she feeds him first so she'll have peace herself. A couple of the pastries are set out for him, a cold nose tucked under her chin as his whole body seems to vibrate with happiness before he tucks in, pressed to Araceli's side as he eats. He's far neater than a hound.

A girl did teach table manners.

"Korrin wore my antaam-saar top as a favour," Araceli comments after a macaron, her other hand settled in Lux's soft fur. "The Inquisition does need support from somewhere, Orlais is the best choice to go to first. That way when whatever is to come after comes, then we know where we stand and what tools we have." Politics is politics, however you slice it, you put on your face and you say the right words in just the right way at just the right time in just the right ear, and it's tiring and it makes you feel like you want a bath but at the same time? Well she chose to be a bard to be useful, so she would rather go to Orlais and do something there than the endless traipsing through bogs or frozen wastelands.

It's only through supreme will that she doesn't swear. Lux looks up at Beleth sharply with his ears forward and his fur fluffed up with unhappiness because he knows more words than most people would ever give him credit for. Smoothing him down, Araceli arches a brow, voice level. "Should asking her not be the first part?" Should I be wondering why you are so calm about this or should I be surprised that I am unsurprised about that part at least?

[arlathvhen]

"That--that armor with the, ah. The rope? And." Beleth spends a few seconds staring wide-eyed at the pastry in her hand, looking mildly scandalized, even if she knew exactly what Araceli was talking about, because she had briefly tried the antaam-saar herself, when it was too damn hot to wear proper armor in the Western Approach. Having people looking at her while she was wearing it, however, changed her mind. A few people she knew well--maybe. Everyone else? Absolutely not.

However, she'd also seen Korrin in it, and so it was with confidence she could say, "That must have been a pleasant present for you." Because Beleth would never try to encroach on the two, but she had eyes, and Korrin was a lovely woman. "As for Orlais...you're right. And a civil war helps no one. Except Corypheus, of course, and I'd rather not let him be helped."

Beleth continues staring down in contemplative calm as Araceli questions her. It's a fair question, to be sure, and Beleth has little answer aside from a shrug. "If Leliana tells me that I can't, then I will obey, but I have wanted to kill this man since I heard of his crimes." She twists her mouth, and even though there's no one that could overhear them on the roof, lower her voice--though no matter how quiet it is, the vitriol is clear. "He hurt children. Is still hurting children, most likely. I don't know how it is in other cultures, but...The Dalish hold our children sacred above all else. We do not suffer those who harm them to live."

[foxsays]

"Oh, Korrin has her own. In red. She had mine knotted about her arm - knights have a token from a lady for battle but I was in Rivain and it was the only thing of mine I thought would survive undamaged. Korrin would fall out of my top if she wore it." Korrin is taller, broader in the shoulder but the size of that particular top depends on how much bust there is, and Araceli has the lion's share in their relationship. Araceli's worn less running around on ships, scrambling about the rigging, or strolling through the streets of Castileos soaking wet after diving into the waters from the rooftops since the trousers cover everything at least.

Holding in the sigh (Lux huffs, because Lux doesn't have so many manners unless he wants something) she considers how to proceed. It won't hurt to speak of her home. To have a common sort of ground that she's shared with another here that they both count among friends. "For a child to come into the world where I am from, they must be wanted. There is no way possible for them to exist without being wanted by one of the two involved in making them, and they will always have a home." If Beleth thinks her or her people simple for that, then Araceli has weathered worse storms than that though she can feel it circling back to the...not-quite argument before Araceli had left for Dairsmuid. "You would have to be very careful. A fight is one thing. Killing is very much another. You are training to be a bard, not an assassin. My mother taught me very young that when you point a finger, there are three pointing back at you - there are an awful lot more hands out there."

There is the Inquisition, and as much as Araceli does not want children to be hurt? Beleth does not exactly inspire confidence.

[arlathvhen]

"I figured as much. I've seen her wear it before, when we were in the Western Approach. It was so hot there, most people were wearing less than usual." She feels obliged to add that just in case Araceli thought that Beleth went around seeing Korrin in boob slings on a basis outside of deserts. "I've heard about tokens in songs before, it sounds incredibly romantic. I like that idea." More romantic than those tops, in her opinion, but Beleth's opinions on such things tend more towards what you would expect of an elderly Chantry sister.

And she nods when Araceli confirms that her culture is similar, though she really has to wonder what kind of birth control these people have, that there are no accidental children, ever. Even witherstalk isn't a guarantee, and not everyone has access to that. But...that's not polite discussion. Especially not while talking about something else far more serious.

"I know. If I'm caught, I'll probably be killed on the spot. But...I have some training, from Zevran." She had never quite made it to becoming a kestrel, not when she proved to not have the stomach for killing random people for pay. "And I have a plan. I'm going to poison him, and make it look like a suicide. With a note and everything." She pauses, listening to how it sounds, because...she's never told anyone this plan, not out loud, though she's spent days thinking over it. "There's more to it than that, I have all the steps planned out, but that's the basic outline. It's the best route, I think. If it succeeds, he will be dead, and no one will even think that an outside force was involved. And--people need to know what he did. He doesn't deserve to die a martyr. And he doesn't deserve to be well regarded after his death."

And he needs to die slow, and die painfully. He needs to suffer. But...that part doesn't sound quite as regal, so she leaves it out.

[foxsays]

"And most people were probably lucky not to burn or get heatsick." Even Araceli had wrapped a thin scarf about herself since she was used to a measure of damp heat rather than the arid baking dust of the Approach stretching out endlessly until it shimmered into a haze. "I thought it sounded ridiculous enough to be funny, honestly, when I was away in Dairsmuid studying. But we don't do things like that where I come from." Oh there are a few tokens but since there hasn't been the right moment to give Korrin the one she's had made? She's keeping her mouth shut. Just to be safe. Since not a soul told Araceli about dragon tooth necklaces until one was slipped around her neck.

If Beleth ever were inclined to ask about Castilean birth control? Prayer. Or something like it. Ask the sea for a child, ask the sea to move through you because men are one half, women are the other, and ask the moon for good measure as a women when the moon is the sea too and she changes same as a woman does each month, each year. Wear a sea horse amulet about your throat and bless yourself, picture the child before the act. Then you have a child in nine months time. You have to want enough for the sea to know; the sea has to feed that child, has to provide for it, the moon has to watch over it every night but the few she hides her face from the world. In Castileos they never forgot how precious their gifts were, and that children are a thing to always be grateful for.

(No child ever feels without a place. No child is ever hurt from that. The hurts come from others but never from being unwanted, abandoned, left to fend for themselves. Zimevur is the one nation that allows that and their children make the long voyage to Castileos. It doesn't really help relations much.)

"Do you know enough about him well enough to fake a note? I used to spend a small fortune if I needed a forger for certain jobs, but I paid that small fortune because I needed a forger, because they knew exactly how to mimic a hand, how to write a letter to someone as if they had been that person their whole life." The words don't come easily when as much as she sympathises with the want, she still isn't sure she should be encouraging Beleth or putting ideas in her head, but she at least can take solace in being reasonably sure there isn't a forger. Outside of Zevran himself probably or perhaps some of the Kestrels. "Will you be going alone? When you have to watch to make sure you are able to poison him? Every place has a rhythm and a heartbeat."

Araceli-the-thief can only say so much. Araceli-the-queensguard could say so much more but would Beleth even wish to know that Araceli as much as she knows this one? She cannot say, nor does she want to give away that secret for something such as this.

[arlathvhen]

She listens to Araceli, because the advice is solid, and that note is definitely going to be the cornerstone of her plan. "I was planning on visiting the place, first, delivering a message to him. That'll give me a chance to see him, get a feel for him. And I'm going to try to look around, see where he sleeps, get an idea for the layout." She hadn't been planning on giving Araceli the entire run down, but--well, it couldn't hurt. Maybe Araceli would see more potential flaws that Beleth hadn't.

"The idea is that he'll have to write a message in return to the one that I give him, and then I'll have an example of his writing. If that's not enough--I can try swiping some writing from him while I'm there. Once I've got the information I need, I'm going to step back--probably return to Skyhold. Maybe I can find a forger here. Or see if Zevran knows one." Except she's not going to be asking Zevran, because Zevran thinks that Cade should be dealing with this himself. But Beleth knows that isn't going to work.

"I'll put the second part into motion once I have the note made up. But I'll be going alone. I can't ask anyone to put themselves at risk for this. This isn't anything for the Inquisition, this is just...personal." And she couldn't risk anyone figuring out who was involved that made it personal.

"--But. Sister Nightingale could just tell me to forget about it, so." She twists her lips, "Who knows. All this planning might be for naught."

[foxsays]

"And if they don't let you in? I'm a thief. Being where I shouldn't be is how I make my living Beleth, and sometimes that does mean going in the front door if I can go to a fancy party, or get an invite on the arm of someone but I have advantages." Araceli looks like she belongs, and if she does not, it's easy to fake; put on the right dress, dig out the right pearls for about her throat, line her eyes a particular way, affect just the right mannerisms. This is--

"You will be watched," is what she settles on after another pause, matter-of-fact, a thief giving advice because Araceli has lived that life since she was fifteen. She has felt so many eyes upon her and Beleth is going to be going into a place where she will stick out like a sore thumb with her Vallaslin. "I know enough of the history here to know that there is very little love lost between your people and the Chantry. What will you do if you cannot do more than give him a note? If you are turned away at the door? Suppose you say it is to be delivered to his hands only, what is to stop them from shutting the door in your face because who are you to them? Nothing and no one. Just some Dalish elf, same as I was just some whore's whelp, some pirate's get."

Do you remember that time on the roof when two prospective students met a teacher? About being underestimated and how it can be used to your advantage? All the same there are times when you are just a girl, and the world is so much bigger than you alone are. The world is very cruel when it likes to remind you of that and Araceli takes no pleasure in it when she picks the plan apart the way she would when planning her own, when working out some mission with the guards as she lifts another little cake and splits it neatly in half.

"I am not trying to discourage you, not precisely. But you are speaking of murder with a likelihood of your own neck, and other reputations that might be traced back no matter how careful you might be because we are not the only ones with spies and scouts and information. And say that Sister Nightingale tells you no, would you be able to set it all aside and sweep your heart and mind clear of it, just so?"