faderift | she rules her life like a fine skylark

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she rules her life like a fine skylark

WHO: Morrigan & you & bonus Kieran
WHAT: For all your witchy needs + all your OGB needs
WHEN: The month we should totally rename Queensway amirite
WHERE: Skyhold/Skyhold area
NOTES: Prose or action spam, I'll follow, feel free to make your own starters too. All starters are in the comments because I like pretty posts shut up

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He waves a hand at the question. The significance she's seeming to attach to the question isn't the significance he wants there.

"The specifics don't matter. Just that you survived it, that you made your own way out there. And the possibility that there's magic you know, that you could teach, to mages who have spent their whole lives within walls."

Now he pushes off from where he's leaning against a rock and faces her directly.

"I'm putting together a conference of sorts. It'll be open to all, mage and anyone not a mage who is curious. Or watchful, considering it's me putting it together. But a day of teaching magic that has practical, day-to-day, non-combat applications, and from there people can continue to work with those they've found they mesh with, or work on projects that have caught their attention. It could be a way to show daunted former Circle mages that there's possibilities."

That they don't need the Circles, the Templars, the false sense of security.

"You could have exceptional insight."

It is very tempting to leave. That she even remains to speak with him is enough but a very soft huff of laughter slips out; clearly no one has ever told him her opinions on Circles and the Mages once within the walls. Such a pity.

"Bother the little Circle with this, not myself." Even the wind seems unwilling to swallow her words, falling silent to allow her to speak. Morrigan speaks with the little Circle - and it is a Circle by any other name if Vivienne sits so happily upon it, if they wish to call it a Council they can delude themselves then that's their own business for her to make mockery of with Gwenaelle over wine - when she has a mind to. Individually. To set a finger on the pulse. And since her son takes lessons with so many of the others. Just about holding much of the venom at bay, she rolls her eyes skyward as if that might grant her the sort of patience required for this, fingers rubbing the familiar grooves worn into her staff over time (if she is thinking of the faces her companions from the Fifth Blight might be making were they here to bear witness, it's keeping her from doing anything else).

"I have work of my own. I came to Skyhold as advisor on arcane matters, not to hold the hands of sheep and strays who cannot think for themselves." It takes time for her to continue, but continue she does. "Bother the rest of the Wardens. Bother whomever else pleases you. Why would you ever think that I would wish to be party to such a fool's errand?"

She is Flemeth's daughter after all, in arrogance if in nothing else. Anders crosses his arms and his expression goes flat.

"The little Circle is close to useless." It's an apt title for them, too. Vivienne at the head, Raylan falling uselessly in line; he'd not be surprised if Ellana was simpleminded enough to fall in with them as well. Korrin's opinions he's unclear on, and that leaves Adelaide and Benevenuta, one of whom is distinctly overworked, constantly, and the other he's not sure is recovered from grieving.

"And what use would I find in anything resembling a Circle to begin with? I thought maybe, as someone else who opposes the Circles, you'd find value in opening the eyes of others, in lessening some of the power of the idiots who want to return to captivity."

Apparently not. At least it had been a whim and not something he'd planned on or for, but Maker, it would have been nice. Maybe one last-ditch effort.

"Have you ever written anything down as far as spells you've used with survival?" The answer is undoubtedly no, but he's asked plenty of questions where the answer is no before.

Morrigan does like Ellana, one of the students she is proudest of, a young woman becoming very much her own person if she's rather misguided in being a part of the Council. At least Morrigan tells her not to allow anyone to walk over her, time will only tell if she listens.

"You were a part of it once. You started a war for it as I understand." A part of this smacks of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but in this case the horse has been killed, butchered, the hide cured, the rest of it boiled into something useful. "I do not advocate for anything, if they are fools enough to leash themselves then they will always be fools, and they would do well to look to the elves for what happens in such cases. We all know that will never happen."

How hot the fires of Halamshiral had burned. How the nobles had complained of the ash, of the lack of servants to clean it up. If none in the Circle had learned to look past their own noses by now then they won't, and there's no need to wash her hands of a thing when her involvement has been as much of her dealings are. On the fringes, the outskirts. One foot in, one foot out.

"I have never had a need to write such a thing down." Some lessons came from books, yes, but anything to do with survival? Flemeth's words and Flemeth's voice, and Morrigan did well to remember them or she would rue when she did not. Kieran's instruction is gentler, but it is as she was taught. "You would do well to start by telling them that dry wood burns and wet wood smokes, what berries will make a stomach cramp. You cannot teach a life."

He was a part of the start of the war, but far from the central figure. Then again, it's not a big enough matter for him to raise it.

"How easily you write them all off. Many of them are young, and only need to know that there can be a life. They've been taught otherwise for as long as they know. They've been taught fear, and that a cold wall and heavy fist are protection against worst. It's never easy to come to a new way of thinking, especially one forged in fear."

Anders takes a breath, feeling more disappointed than anything else. The people who wanted mages to stay sheep, scared and shaken, were organized. Loud. They had every advantage. The ones who wanted to make sure the Circles didn't return? They were scattered. Or, like Morrigan, they had it and didn't care if others did. This is an uphill climb, has always been an uphill climb. It just would have been nice if one of the best-known apostates was willing to join in.

"Well. If you come across anything that would be a useful initial guide to survival, rather than the crash-course I had to give myself, let me know." He leans back against the rock, looking back up into the sky. "Not all of the lost ones are set in their ways. Some simply need to know that another way truly does exist."

"When first I set foot within a Circle, abominations had taken hold. There were none to be found during my instruction." Ten years down the road and an impression is still an impression. "I wonder...what do they teach the elves in the alienages? When the Tevinter slavers come with false cures for plagues, or when the chevaliers ride through with their blades drawn? Or perhaps when their Empress puts Halamshiral to the torch."

Mages have so many voices, a whole Council yet the elves have two representatives within Skyhold that she knows of. Mages likely find it easier to complain than when someone calls them rabbit or knife-ear, or tells them they cannot buy from their shop, cannot even go where they might wish to go.

Morrigan has her work. Has her son. Has no desire to be a part of any of this mess more than she desired to hear Wynne preaching the supposed virtues of the Circles ten years ago to an angrier girl spitting venom at her.

"You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. If you try, you are like to drown the beast or have it injure itself and you at the same time." How often has she watched as men attempt to shape a thing to their pleasing only for that thing not wish to take that shape? Not exactly like this but still, she watched, that was so much of her life. On the fringes, on the margins, on the spaces between that were borders and boundaries, disputed by everyone and nothing, a foot in and a foot out. "Change is coming to the world, change is what sets them free. They will fight it, they may fear it, but the face of the world must struggle with itself. It cannot be nursed along with someone holding one hand. A child must learn to walk and skin their knees."

"...I'm no mother, obviously, while you are, but from what I've seen, mothers generally let their child hold a hand as they're starting to get used to walking."

The metaphor doesn't hold up in his experience. He'd seen a great many toddlers in his Darktown clinic as they seem to catch every disease there is, and most of them had a mother's finger as they learned.

"They get that hand first, and then they are free to walk and skin their knees. But they're still infants. Without the initial hand. I'm not looking to force them to drink. I'm looking to show them that there's water that won't suddenly surge and drown them, that they can walk without being shoved down. I'd want to do that for anyone who lives in fear, mage or elf or rifter."

He takes a breath, lets it out. As if he'd have time to coddle or baby an entire group of people when he also has a half-dozen things he's researching, he's doing Grey Warden matters, and healing at the tents. Along with anything else the Inquisition needs him doing.

"But if you're not interested, there's nothing I can say that will change that."

"Would you paint them all as squalling babes then?" What a clamour, she can just imagine the outcry if they were said to be such, as much as others might gain from such a picture. Even Flemeth was more nurturing in the earliest of years than what she pictures here with a shake of her head. "The child must learn. I have a son of my own." So she knows. She is painfully aware of how a child grows, of that fleeting fragility.

(And it reminds her to speak with Alistair, to remind him in turn since there are so very many Wardens present.)

"You presume you are the one to teach them? How many of them, if asked, would hold you responsible for what befell their Circles? What we want is often unimportant." The last words are softer, almost gentle if anyone can recognise such in a wild thing; a hundred times, a hundred more, a hundred more again until she has lost track she has told herself that, since that last parting, since slipping between two worlds.

Nothing matters more to her than Kieran, and she hopes that is enough the day he founds out the truth about how he came to be, the why of it. But if he hardens his heart, she will never blame him, and she will carry that with her and now it's the price she paid, same as the Wardens know what price they paid to save three skins and three souls in one night.

"No, there is not. Perhaps--" If Leliana had not been so crushed by the betrayal of friends when she had already been hurting? If Morrigan had not been so afraid for Kieran when he could so easily be mistaken for an abomination, for something to be hunted and put to the sword? "You made a choice, Detlef."

When it comes to the Inquisition, Morrigan's honesty bitter and sharp though it may be, cannot be faulted or questioned.

He squints at her. She was the one who started the comparison to children learning to walk, he's fairly certain, but it doesn't matter.

"I'm not presuming to be the one to teach them," he gently corrects. "That's the whole purpose of me asking other mages if they'd teach. I'm seeking to bring mages together after, yes, I did add to the division. But if more want to learn from me, I'd be glad to teach. I enjoy it. Including instructing someone who is as a daughter to me."

Not everyone likes teaching. Not everyone has to.

"I made a choice, and I'm continuing to make choices. I will, for as long as I draw breath." It's been suggested he should keep his head down and not help out, but he can't. He simply cannot stop working, and cannot stop trying. His work ethic and his conscience won't allow it. "You've made your own."

It's clear. It could be the end of the conversation, really. He's just not walking away because he's comfortable where he is and wants to stay outside the walls longer. She can stay and talk more, or she could go prowling as a wolf again; it doesn't matter to him.

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