faderift | A bottle of white, a bottle of red

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A bottle of white, a bottle of red

WHO: Open to anyone that wants wine and warmth and a little company.
WHAT: Wine and no whining.
WHEN: After the mage meeting wraps up.
WHERE: Close to the healing tents, specifically the Orlesian section.
NOTES: There will be wine, drinking, unwinding, and nibbles.

The meeting had been stressful for just about everyone involved. Tempers had flared, opinions made known, a few rounds of confetti and arguing before some manner of accord. Whether it would last or however long it might? No one could truly say. In the interest of being quite done with the stress and headaches such debate brought on the Orlesian healing tents clearing out the potions, bandages, and poultices in favor of what cushions and braziers they had on hand for light and for heat. The space was open, warm, and inviting with an odd assortment of tin mugs or clay glasses set around flat side tables propped up with stones to keep them from wobbling and tipping the whole mass onto the ground. There are some dried fruits and hard cheeses, dried meat and hard crusted bread- whatever scraps they could scavenge or spare and a few bottles of wine or brandy. Across the entrance to the tents there was a sign:

Bring a bottle or food to share for entry.

Tacked below was a list of rules:

Everyone is welcome, don't make a fuss
Don't hog the wine
Don't hog the food
Don't fight or argue
If you finish a bottle open a new one, don't recork it for someone else to find
Clean up after yourselves

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That laughter feels beautiful to Cyril, like it's music, joyful and a little messy perhaps, but the way her face lights up is almost breathtaking.

"I suppose it's good to hear Our People are similar in some regards even across the barriers of realms." He really has a hard time to think of anything else he has similar to Galadriel and the elves from her home. "If only we could share more positive traits." He gave her a bit a smirk then, showing that he wasn't too worried about it.

"Do you mind if I ask what Galadhrim means? Your language is so beautiful."

"Ah!" Galadriel looked surprised then, his question was not one she had anticipated and, as she considered it, she carefully turned over the last few moments. She was almost certain she had been speaking common, at least mostly.

"People of the trees," she answered after a brief pause. "It is what those who dwell in Lórien are called, for Caras Galadhon mostly. It is also the title of our lands' finest guard. Archers and swordsmen, all honorable and true...if prone to bragging when they meet their woodland kin."

She considered apologizing for her lapse into Sindarin but, more than anything else, she expected it would happen again. Instead she peered at him, curiosity written on her face.

"What is a halla? If firing through its horns is a boast, it must be either a complex task or a deeply unwise one. Are they large and likely to take exception to such feats?"

"They aren't large. They're smaller than horses. They're..." He pauses for a moment, thinking over how to describe one. He realizes how sad he is that Skyhold doesn't have any, but locking halla away in a fortress seems cruel. Still, speaking of it makes him realize how much he misses having them around.

"They are graceful and beautiful with silver coats. They have antlers that reach out from their heads and cross over each other, leaving these small gaps between them. If you fire at one, which again many Dalish would regret to do, it's likely to dodge out of the way.

The Dalish live with them in our camps. They are as close as kin. They help pull the aravel and we protect them."

As he answered her, her curiosity melted into delight. Wine made her mood light and it shifted easily. Her smiles and expressions drift between one another like a leaf atop a river, dancing over the surface, drawn by the barest whorls of thought and conversation.

"They sound beautiful," Galadriel said and drew a drink from her cup. "I can imagine why one would regret taking aim at them."

The idea of silvered deer with winding antlers came to mind and Galadriel let out a nearly wistful sigh. She could not recall seeing such creatures, not in her long life, but they were so easy to imagine that she was nearly convinced she had.

"I would have delighted to see a beast like that roaming between the mellyrn," she said. "Silver coats through silver trunks beneath blooms of gold and bright spring sun. It would have been the very picture of the Undying Lands."

"Perhaps if the Inquisition sends us to the Dales you'll see one. They roam in wild herds there." Visiting the Dales would cause him a variety of mixed feelings, but at least it would be beautiful.

Listening to her, even though he wasn't sure what the mellyrn was, he could still picture silver trucks and gold blooms. It did sound beautiful.

"The Undying Lands?" he asked after a moment. "Is that some sort of... after life?"

That, unfortunately, was a complicated question and while Galadriel opened her mouth to begin refuting the idea, she didn't actually speak. A moment passed and she frowned as she thought about how best to explain Aman.

"It is the journey's end." Galadriel said slowly and chose her words carefully...as carefully as she was able. A quiet settled across her as she thought, part nostalgia and part sorrow, and her smile was distant. "Where those who came before, those who have left, and those who have perished await; across the sea, a far green country, everlasting and beautiful."

It sounded like a dream and, as she spoke the words, her face fell. After a moment's pause, she let out a heavy sigh and regarded her cup of wine. It was a challenge to describe Aman to the elves in Middle-earth, she had no idea how to make it real to one of the Dalish.

"It...is a place," she asserted, quite bluntly, a note of frustration in her tone. "It was my homeland, long, long ago. I know not if I will see it again, should I live or die in these lands, but I know that your people would be welcomed."

Thinking about Aman was a sobering thing and she disliked it. Instead, she turned a reassuring and mild smile to Cyril.

"It is the home of all elves who would have it."

Cyril watched her and for the first time, his face expressed a hint of the deep sorrow he felt when he looked at her. He knew that she wasn't the cause of that pain, though, and had been working hard to hide it.

At this, though, it's impossible to keep all of it from his eyes.

"That..." he stated after a moment. "That is everything that the Dalish want. A home with our fellow elves." He looked away, eyes lingering for a moment on the other Dalish at the party. "We had hoped to find a way to create that home here, in Thedas. This land used to belong to us before we lost everything."

Galadriel's face fell as she watched sorrow and longing creep into his eyes. Were she sober, she would not have done him the disservice of noticing. As it stood, she listened to his admission and her frown deepened. She was not normally so bold with her touch as she was then; some combination of wine and sympathy moved her and she reached out to brush his hair from his face, to uncover the lines that marked his reverence to Thedas's Valar.

"You have not lost everything," she corrected sadly. "To be Elven is not a thing so easily taken, nor cast aside."

Her usual eloquence was not entirely beyond her, but it was not entirely within her grasp, either.

"Homelands are lost, great cities rise and fall, even those of the Elves. The West is everlasting, but you should not give up hope of creating the land you long for." At long last she pulled her hand back and wrapped it around her mug, alongside her other. Her smile was less sad, then, as she continued.

"I wandered for years unnumbered before I found my way to Lórien. Though I do long for Aman, it is beneath the leaves of Lórien that my heart truly lies. You will find your heart's home."

Listening to her, it's so easy to believe it, to know in his core that they would recover some of what had been lost. It made his chest ache, but in a different sort of way. He felt a glimmer of hope.

"Why did you have to leave?" he asked, finding himself wanting to know everything she would tell him about her life.

Galadriel was rarely taken aback, but she could not recall the last person who had asked her that question. She had no doubt that it had been when dawn was new, if not before. Her mild smile was obviously startled and the expression held as she stared at him. Obvious as it was, it hadn't occurred to her, not until that moment, that he wouldn't know...that none of the elves in Thedas would.

She felt a pang deep in her chest.

It wasn't a painful feeling, but rather a portentous one. It was the sensation of a thread being pulled taut, awaiting the clean cut of a knife to trim it, but also ready to give and unravel something inside her. What that thread was woven into she could not say, but she felt the threat of it, that delicate snag, as it tugged against her ribs.

"That," Galadriel answered slowly. There was no condemnation in her tone, he had not chosen a topic that was too fraught to recount, but there was a great deal of caution in her pacing. "...Is a very long tale, my friend," she warned quietly, "even by my reckoning."

"Are you certain you wish to hear it?"

"I am," Cyril responds without hesitation. "Though if you'd rather not tell it, I understand."

He doesn't want her to feel pressured, but he also doesn't want her to worry about telling it for his sake.

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A bottle of white, a bottle of red

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