003 🌿

[ancarrow]

WHO: Eirlys and OPEN
WHAT: Eirlys realises she belongs both to the Inquisition and the alienage, and simultaneously to neither of them.
WHEN: Beginning of Kingsway
WHERE: Skyhold, then Halamshiral
NOTES: If anyone has messages they'd like Eirlys to deliver to their CR in either Skyhold or Halamshiral, hit me up!

a) Skyhold
She'd made the journey back to Skyhold toward the end of August, to deliver a report about how things were going in Halamshiral. Eirlys is noticeably tired - not in the same washed-out way she's been noticed to be in the past, but a sort of determined resilience that's keeping her going despite how weary she is. She only stays a single night in Skyhold, making sure to do the rounds in the healing tents, and to deliver messages to friends of those that she'd left in the camp in Orlais.

It's during the latter activity when she finds out the news of Asher Hardie's death, and though she didn't know him well, she struggles to keep herself together when she remembers how she'd mixed the medicine into honey for him when she'd nursed him, the same way she'd done with her sister both in their childhood and more recently before her death. The purse he's left her, though, astounds her. She's never seen so much money all at once before, and she's not sure how best to put it to use. Placing it in the deep pocket of her cloak, she heads over to the chapel to pray to the Maker for him, but ends up just sitting with her head leaning against the stone wall, feeling rather numb.

Before she leaves, she ropes anyone she can find into an emergency session in the courtyard to make as many poultices and potions as she can to take back to Halamshiral with her, before loading them into the wagon along with anyone who wants to make the trip, watching Skyhold fade into the distance.


b) Halamshiral
It had become very clear to Eirlys, especially in the incident with the cart, that out here she wasn't regarded as a city elf with experiences and suffering in common with the elves of Halamshiral, but solely as a representative of the Inquisition - an outsider come to tell them how to live, one of a few token elves in a new offshoot of a human institution that had arguably bulldozed its way through southern Thedas. She couldn't blame them, there'd be plenty in Gwaren who'd be just as suspicious, but it still stings as the wagon moves through the narrow streets, knowing that most of the eyes that pass over her see her as an intruder and a target, and wondering whether the supplies she's bringing will even make it back to the camp.

The next few days sees her throwing herself into her work, helping with healing and renovating and logistics, but looking very nervous and unsure when she interacts with the local city elves and a little sad around the Inquisition, really not quite sure where she fits any more.