she rules her life like a fine skylark

[arcaneadvisor]

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

Comments

[theproperglove]

"As am I," Josephine agrees readily, still scrutinising Morrigan's face as though she may find all the answers to every question she's ever had written upon it, somehow. Leliana's happiness is the priority, and Josephine is glad that she and Morrigan see eye to eye on that matter at that very least. "She has changed much, since I last knew her best." And not for the better, in Josephine's opinion, but it is an opinion she keeps close to her heart, these days.

"Antiva City is a beautiful place," Josephine continues, almost as an aside although she cannot disguise the way her eyes light up as they always do when she talks about her home country, "but it is not quite so extravagant as Val Royeaux. I was still young when I went to Orlais to study - fifteen, sixteen at best? It truly did feel like another world, but it was a world I fell in love with right from the very outset." Politics had always come naturally to her, and to be right in the very heart of the Game had been a heady, intoxicating thing.

[arcaneadvisor]

And who allowed that, Morrigan thinks, where were any of you. An angry pulsing thing, alive like a swarm of wasps or worse that sometimes rises and surfaces at the least opportune of moments; how Leliana holds so many lives in her hands, but thinks herself alone responsible for each and every death that has been, that might be. Cuts and cuts again until how much is left but the bone? Not for Josephine to know (some things Morrigan can discuss with Zevran, because there's a strange overlap of life there between the three of them, and Leliana needs her secrets) but she nods, sighs sharp enough it hurts. "Enough that you might wonder if you ever knew her at all," she murmurs, soft enough that the wind almost swallows it. Almost.

After all, she did call Leliana little deceiver once.

"I imagine that if someone were to fall in the waters of Antiva dressed as they do in Val Royeaux, they would sink rather quickly." Most of what Morrigan knows even now still comes from Zevran so that tends to form an awful lot of her opinions; it was a place of shadows and knives, and recent events concerning him have hardly helped. Easy to forget that it's a place of riches too. "Tell me - is there much to love? Calling it all a Game while sacrificing those most in need, throwing balls and arguing lace over velvet behind masks while everything about them falls to pieces? A Landsmeet, though tedious, has an honesty about it."

[theproperglove]

Josephine choses her words delicately; she knows there is no love lost between Orlais and many members of the Inquisition, but yet, she has never failed to see the beauty that still lingers even after all the terrible things that have happened.

"Is it dishonest?" she asks, more lightly than she feel; she always desires to tread carefully around Morrigan. "The Game... it is a light-hearted name for the machinations that exist within politics, that are truly found at the heart of most government." Honestly, Josephine would go so far as to say all but perhaps some of the Rifters come from places that are more stable, more egalitarian than Thedas.

She can only dream.

"Perhaps it could be considered dishonest, to see so much suffering hidden behind lace and masks and soirees, but beautiful things are often built on the foundations of others' suffering. Orlais, she does not hide from this unpleasant truth so much as embraces it. Orlais does not pretend to be anything other than it is. Whether one can still love it, despite knowing all this, I feel is a matter of personal interest."

[arcaneadvisor]

"All is laid bare. Not danced about." Ten years ago and Morrigan had honestly thought the best plan of action was to march straight into Denerim to confront Loghain, and still, she would rather deal with some things more readily if she can but now, after being surrounded by politics, she can appreciate what was there. The ability to speak plainly. "All was stripped back to the bone. I wonder, what might we find were Orlais to be peeled back?" Rot, she thinks, heaving and festering, hidden beneath all that gilding and scented water, all those falsely sweet words.

It's difficult to know if Josephine is sincere or naive, what Morrigan herself wishes to believe.

"Embraces it with daggers hidden up their sleeves perhaps," she murmurs with a quiet laugh, thinking of each and every time a bard has moved in the corner of her vision. "I do hope the Inquisition will be very much something of its own, rather than following blindly. Given that Orlais is too busy tearing itself to pieces than offering any aid at present."

[theproperglove]

"I doubt emulating the failures of Orlais it is the goal of any who had a hand in the formation of the Inquisition," Josephine says, her smile tightening slightly. "Whether we suceed in such an endeavour, well. Some would say it is in our nature to be dishonest. Is it truly something that can be overcome?"

This conversation is taking a turn that Josephine dislikes; she so rarely airs her disatisfactions, her concerns, prefers to confine them to letters home to Antiva. With her family, she can truly be herself. It is not that she dislikes her role with the Inquisition, but...

...It is complicated. Josephine reels herself in with a long inhale and exhale. "But my thoughts on such matters are inconsequential. Let us not dwell on them. I meant only to..." And she squirims a little, at the admission, twisting side to side at the waist, "... to ascertain that Leliana is happy. That is all."

[arcaneadvisor]

"At times I am reminded of a bear made to dance." It is out of a kindness to Leliana's friendship with Josephine that she doesn't say that a bear has but one head, only four legs, not the bizarre number of heads that snap at one another she sometimes pictures the Inquisition as having, nor the oddly numbered limbs staggering along. "There will always be talk. The Inquisition? It is doing more than all else. Orlais tears itself apart. Ferelden? Well, I came through the Hinterlands to come here. Each time you reach, someone will be eager to knock you down. Yet that should not stop you."

There is a smile; do not be discouraged, this is how she is, she is a mother, she is the Witch of the Wilds, she came through the Fifth Blight. She hates politics and wishes she could stride through it the way she did with the rules of the Game without a mask and in her dark gown, that is all.

"That...I cannot say. I like to think so." Perhaps that's a blush, Morrigan is so very pale that a blush creeps up her throat rather well. Leliana will be insufferable were she ever to hear. "I am able to pry her away from her work and take down the dratted hood."

[theproperglove]

Josephine notices the way Morrigan's neck colours (how could she not) and files this occurrence away in her memory to be reflected upon later. Her head tilted to the side in contemplation once more, she remarks, "Then that's all I can ask for."

She gets to her feet, dusting down the front of her clothes. "In any case, I should get going. I fear I've taken up enough of your time."