faderift | 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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

A bottle of white, a bottle of red

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