faderift | The secrets in the snow

"The little fennecs here, I did read about them but I don't think I could ever train one of of them to do what I did with Lux, not even now that I'm older. And I had Lux when I was a girl so he just followed me about, grew up with me to copy or to do as I asked." Some people make jokes at home but this is Thedas where people might read too far into jokes, Inessa someone she doesn't know quite well enough to share them with so she keeps them to herself for now as the fox creeps off to see if he can pounce at Garahel. "I could smuggle them in my pockets but I think they'd object to being slung over my shoulders and carried up the walls I'm climbing, or I set him to be my lookout and he's never done me wrong."

Maybe that's just loyalty though, all the years of her childhood with him paying off but they've been through some scrapes both here and in Thedas. Whatever she asks him to do, he does it. Doesn't fuss much unless they're both frightened about the thing looming ahead of them. If she has to bribe him then so be it, her parents both taught her how the world works before Felix Bonaventura swaggered off his ship to press a ball of terrified squawking fur into the waiting hands of his daughter.

"Don't remind me, I learned all their heraldries," she says it as though that was a hardship, as though she didn't enjoy that part but sometimes you need to maintain illusions about yourself.

"We each have our challenges in life. Store your blessings in your holster for when you need them." That's some Felix Bonaventura wisdom right there for free, you're welcome. The old man is twirling his moustache with pride whenever she parrots that particular one back since it numbered among her least favourite in her teens.

At some point, Araceli hopes there might be a need to go north again even if she's maybe been spoiled compared to most what with two trips to Antiva and one to Rivain all with the Inquisition. She even got to see Tevinter too though not even Korrin knows that one. "How did you grow up as you did without always being asked to do this and that around something like a kitchen or a fire? We were always having to do something when I was little in my mother's brothel, even on my father's ship they would find me a box." She was a very small child Korrin, as you can probably imagine. "So much is making do, substituting and adding and playing around with it. Not difficult."

Says the girl who cooked regularly for a building full of people from her mid-teens but moving swiftly on as she lets the smell and heat of the kitchens hit her, squeezing past one tall grey chef to start poking about. "Can you see about spices for me? Pick your favourites but only one really hot one, I need to see what I actually have to work with for meat before I can start."

"Okay. I'll probably get the hang of it as we play, really. We play until the Angel of Death turns up? That's delightfully morbid."

The image of Araceli smuggling fennecs in her pockets gets a chuckle from Inessa, and when she notices what Lux is doing. If Garahel remains focused on The Walrus to the exclusion of his fox buddy, it's his own fault for getting pounced. "That must have been wonderful, having such a childhood companion. I always wondered what it would have been like, but what cats we had in the Circles were mousers, not pets. Even outside it, the chances of me being anywhere near a mabari were unlikely. They try to reserve those for the nobles...or at least, humans."

But mabari will imprint as they please, in the end. It's the great equalizer, to the annoyance of those focused on station. Being a Grey Warden at a time when the Fifth Blight is still fresh in people's minds helped a great deal. Without it, even access to a kennel may not have been possible.

"It's a lot to memorize, isn't it? But I always thought those books interesting, even if it seemed very unlikely at the time that they would see any practical use." Well, unless she requested a transfer but there was really not real reason for that at the time. "Imagine if we could gain their support. A region, known for its squabbling, uniting to stand behind us. It would send a powerful message." Which is why it seems unlikely, unless Corypheus directly creates chaos there. Oh well, at it's not currently at war with itself, unlike a certain empire.

That saying prompts a smile from Korrin, who will commit that to memory for later. At least she has plenty of blessings to choose from, Araceli's presence being responsible for a good portion of them.

Nodding to the request about spices, she begins scanning the higher shelves for her usual favorites. There will be at least one strong addition, guaranteed, but Araceli's cooking is such that Korrin tends not to need more than that, anyway. "Oh, I was asked to do things around camp. That was as much of a kitchen as we had without visiting Tama. She put down roots, so she built herself up a huge one, as you've seen. But my parents were always on a job or on the road, so there wasn't a lot of time to teach me more than the simplest, most efficient things. Whatever I know that isn't 'roast it over a fire' is almost certainly because of Tama. She's the one that insisted I know how to make banana bread, and that spiced wine."

Memories of bonding with her grandmother over food bring out a fond smile, as she gathers what's needed to set on the worktable. "You on a box is an adorable image, I gotta say. If I'd known you back then, I would have let you cook atop my shoulders. The ceilings a bit too low to try that now, though."

What is childhood? The shadow of a thing that looms larger than either of them, something sharp that bites and claws, that places a hand on the shoulder at an unexpected moment as if to drag a body back through the years perhaps. For both of them too there are Templars though Morrigan's all died at least, chasing after a shrieking girl in a bog who never understood that part of the game was dangerous too.

What her son knows about the world as it is, cannot be helped, must be what they are to keep him alive, to make him ready. But he walks taller than she did at his age at least.

Heroes. Do any of them feel like heroes? Oghren, perhaps, when he has enough drink in him but such a title appended to her own name has never felt fitting, not entirely. A young woman with a plan, making a friend she had not thought to, and now she wonders where he is. Mostly, she hopes that he's well. Assures herself that somehow she would know in her bones that if he was lost to them that she'd feel it, she'd know it, surely she would, she would.

"Do you not have that now? As you are within the healers?" It's a genuine curiousity since she doesn't know how they actually govern themselves at all, if they answer to anyone or even each other. "I had thought you headed a mission of no small importance not so very long ago also."

"Rivain was not so pleasant in the end for us even if it all worked in our favour but what they had there once? A Circle where they could practice their old ways, where they could be with their families? It was a better way to be than what was here before. A front as they got on with everything that had served them well." Maybe they'll get that back one day, maybe they won't. The Rivaini that came to Skyhold seem divided on it when they discuss it. "Some day you must go sailing though, all that ocean for miles - Christine, all the maps in your libraries and no one knows what sits at the edges of them!"

She smiles, tips her head back to imagine a sun that bursts through the clouds that is warmer than this, where the wind that so often tugs at her curls doesn't cut through.

"Maybe you might stand on a mountain and I might stand on the deck of a ship, and we will both be free and looking for more places like that for the rest."

Ducking under Kalla's arm, Araceli hums to make sure Korrin knows she can hear her as she gets to work hunting through where they keep the meat. Hearing about Korrin's childhood on the road is always interesting, trying to picture it in her mind from what she does know about Thedas from the places she's seen herself or the illustrations in the books she reads in the library. The hardest part is trying to imagine Korrin's height since the best she has to work with is Kas who already tops Araceli by a good half a foot as it is but some of the rest she can fill in. "Cooking is a big thing for us, we're on a port, we can get almost everything if we have the coin for it. Speaking of, Kalla you know I'm good for it, mark it agains me and we'll settle up tomorrow?"

Please excuse her for some intense haggling over the price of fish but dammit Kalla she was the one who went to Adelaide about mages freezing fish in the first place, has she not earned these fish? Damn right she has earned the fish.

"Some day you should make banana bread when we're going to a terrible place so we can be very smug." You know, the way Araceli sits and puts spices on her food in front of the scouts or soldiers, or sits and eats whole chili peppers in front of them to prove her dominance. "You didn't know the cook in the brothel though, we had to behave in there. Cooking was practically sacred. Knew just where to get you with her towel if you weren't doing as she told you."

But here she is, triumphant with her fish, so hopefully Korrin has the spices so she can begin.

At least both beasts stand out equally since Lux is doing his whole change from dark to russet at the moment, slinking low on his belly, furtive little steps at time before halting, checking, all the signature moves he picked up ini Araceli's shadow. "Not so much when they're biting your fingers for fish and pissing on the carpet. Or in your bed. Or chewing anything they think looks like something they might wish to chew. We don't really have cats for mice and rats in Castileos - too much water for them, we've got dogs since they're better for swimming but would they just ignore you? Or was it a Circle rule? Because I can imagine that, from what I have heard of them." Not all Circles were the same but too often she's heard it repeated that attachments were discouraged, and even with an animal she imagines it could be something the overzealous would soon put an end to for whatever reason they dreamt up. "A dog is a dog. Don't mabari do that-- they pick. People say how wise and intelligent mabari are, and that they pick their people, surely it makes no sense to do any of that if the dogs can pick the person they wish to be with."

In general, she doesn't really 'get' the dog thing. People probably don't get her whole sea thing and they especially wouldn't get the whale part so maybe that's the balance but she doesn't go to bond with a whale, and no one would stop her if she wanted to get close to one. Just another way that Thedas is terrible really.

"I learned flags from ships in port; what country, is it a merchant or not, are they important people and so on. People here are so attached to where they come from for the most part, maybe more for humans than elsewhere I think, and I would trust it more for those not mages but what I have chosen here? As much as I can learn quickly? It might save my life." Bards keep their knives up their sleeves after all and behind every friendly smile is someone waiting for her to slip up.

"Si. I'm just disappointed that they have knights and swords and such things. My cards have naked mermaids on some of them, it's more exciting that way." But alas, Thedas is all about hiding most of the boobs away she reflects as she deals out the cards, resolving not to cheat from the start because she's teaching. And the lesson today isn't actually about teaching or spotting tells.

"Aw, that does sound like a loss. I mean, the art's fine on these, but still." Cosima can appreciate some fine nautical art.

"Ok, so. Draw, discard and play in that order? One draw, one discard, or can you do more than one card at a time?"

"Most people here haven't seen a walrus, I have to explain why I named my nuggalope what I did." What a trial, these people who sail a tiny bit and say 'yeah, sure, that's enough we need to get back to stabbing and oppressing each other some more'.

"That's how I've been playing it unless someone at the table wants to play by whatever 'rule' they have. Some of which make absolutely no sense but it makes it more fun the more drunk everyone gets."

Even if Morrigan didn't consider herself one Bruce was pretty sure that there was at least some people who would. After all she was one of the ones that saved Ferelden from the Blight, had been one in Warden Cousland's groups with Zevran and Alistair. Even from that alone she had her reputation.

But as it always was with things like these, there was always more to it than just their reputation.

He shakes his head in response to the question. "No, I'm just simple surgeon." The healers generally were more of a community than having any kind of authority over one another, as far as he was aware. There was a time where it seemed like some of them wanted to have some kind of organization... but that never really happened, so. "And that mission wasn't anything really important. Just some gathering of materials and such." And he always preferred to let somebody else lead - it was better off this way. "I'm just glad I can contribute somehow."

Korrin smiles at the haggling, knowing Araceli will always get the best deal she can manage. It's always entertaining to just listen to her at work, getting the upper hand with that silver tongue of hers. Granted, it's for a good cause, so the Vashoth woman doesn't feel at all guilty. They'll share whatever they don't eat, anyway.

"She sounds a lot like Tama, making sure that everything has to be just so. I'm not sure she'd call it sacred, not in words, but it's always been obvious that preparing and serving food right is an important part of life. It can be easy to forget, when we're busy trying to keep the word from falling apart, but moments like this are a good reminder of what it should be like."

Taking the time to make their meal and taking the time to enjoy it is good for the soul. Tama might have said that but even if she didn't, Korrin would have felt it. "I'll bring the banana bread, if you bring the chili peppers. Their faces when you eat those in front of them are always priceless."

One day come watch her when the stores are low. Less pretty, more mercenary, slipping in and out of her own language depending on her mood and how intense it gets. If she had her own way and her own kitchen instead of having to share this communal Inquisition bullshit then things would run smoother but no, she must share, and that means she has to deal with such things.

"A lot of things are sacred to my people," Araceli shrugs as she slaps the fish down on a chopping board to get to work, clearly comfortable with this part. "We would never eat whale unless the whole of Castileos were starving, we only use the bones and teeth when we find them washed up on the shores after other things have picked them clean." That's just one example of many but there are other little things she could mention that they do or don't do, expressions of love, of giving a part of yourself that maybe she doens't need to.

Korrin ate her food before she went away and then she came back for First Day and the rest is history as they say.

"Of course. Speaking of - can you start mixing the spices? If anything needs ground or cut too then we should have that done so it's ready to go when the fish are good."

"No doubt you have heard some Chantry sister or Templar say by now that it was mages themselves who first asked to be isolated in Circles with Templars to protect them." There's a dryness to her voice as she says this. "They do so love omitting the fact that mages wished for the isolation because villages were banding together to slaughter them. If the Chantry taught more peace and acceptance than fear and revulsion, Circles never would have existed in the first place." But training mages to learn how to safely use magic is important. "I always thought how nice it would have been to have schools to teach mages that allowed you home for holidays. Everyone -- not just the rich. And once you had proven you were a capable mage -- without being subjected to a Harrowing -- you could leave school and make your place in the world. If only the Rivaini way had caught on."

She chuckles at the idea of sailing, since she truly has no idea where she would even go. Adventure has never been something she's longed for. Safety and happiness are her goals in life. But she is curious about those who have sailed east and never returned.

"I wonder," she begins, an intrigued tone to her voice, "if those who made the attempt were lost in a storm or if they made it to a new land that is such a paradise that they have no desire to ever return." She shrugs. "Or perhaps they met hostile natives. It is difficult to say what might be out there." But a smirk slides onto her face as she glances over at her friend. "Are you saying you wish to see what is out there? If the land is empty of people, you could name it yourself!"

"Good point. I'll get on that pronto." Korrin gets a bowl and a chopping block after a quick moment's search, snagging a knife as well. Anything more than that can wait, if it's needed. Quickly sorting out what can just be dumped into the bowl for mixing from what needs attention, she gets to work with a quick hand. Tama taught her well how to prep ingredients, and muscle memory kicks in without a hitch.

"Would that we had our own kitchen, eh? Imagine what we could do if we didn't have to share or kick people out just to make good use of this. I know, we're lucky just to have a room in Skyhold at all instead of cramped into the barracks or one of those tents. Allow me this moment of greed."

To be fair, their room was little more than a hole in the wall when first claimed. It took energizing debris and some significant handiwork to make it more livable. In its present condition, it would have been snagged for some visiting dignitary or noble instead. As it is, mysteriously no one has asked them to move. She's not sure if it's her presence, Araceli's or Lux's. Maybe all three.

Have you ever watched an owl perched in a high branch? The particular way one ever so slowly turns its head to an angle that doesn't quite seem natural? Something about the way Morrigan looks at him and holds herself carries the suggestion of it.

"I have seen my share of them." Some, she thinks, might have been little better than the village butcher called in at a time of crisis in some cases, perhaps the blacksmith. "Ever this insistence on shrinking away; an admission of pride in oneself and skill does not mean baring your neck to the demons." That's about as gentle an admonishment as Morrigan can make it in all honesty, as if he's being more than a little ridiculous but she can't quite understand it. The only time she plays at false modesty is if she has ever wished for some sort of praise, when she's wanted to play coy.

Mostly she's past that. Not that she would admit it, she'd wrap someone in webbing from the rafters in the main hall before she did.

"Oh my god, do you have the game Kings in your world? It's, uh, more about tolerance than strategy, but one of the main points is that the longer you play, the more rules players have made up that you have to remember. Popular choice when you've lost the coordination to play flip cup."

Cosima is pretty sure flip cup won't work in a world where most drinking vessels are ceramic or metal. Still.

"Something like that. The time of Ambrosia the Second, mages protesting no better use for their magic than lighting the eternal flame - that is the correct term for it, no? - before they barricaded themselves within the cathedral for three weeks. The separation then from the Chantry into the Circle for study though of course, it sounds much too neat, too simple for it to have been that way for all." Araceli did discuss it with a Seeker when they had been discussing said book but she isn't about to reveal her source so easily. Still, she isn't wholly ignorant, not compared to some given that she does wish to help mages gain their freedom. "Perhaps some place such as the University of Orlais and the Circle of Dairsmuid before the Seekers came to it, if such a thing could ever be."

Which...isn't something she's voiced before but it's something perhaps to test. To try out. And of course there is Nevarra with their own ways, and then to see if there is anything they might salvage of the Circle without stirring up so much feeling on either side that any debate is made impossible. If there is even a scrap they could take from Tevinter not considered tainted.

(Perhaps, she thinks, it might be time to write to Lady Thevenet once again to truly test the waters.)

Then they are talking of the sea and she is able to smile same as the sun might appear through passing cloud.

"Naming a land isn't what interests me, no, land has been keeping me far too long already up here in the mountains. I am of a nation of sailors who upon finding each country where I call home still sail with our hungry hearts to remind all who settled where they came from, so I would keep searching, keep roaming." When she talks this way she can taste the salt-spray on her tongue, hear the gulls screaming overhead above the groan of the hull, the lash of the sails in the wind. "I want to see. I want to know it - I know every island of Castileos and every rooftop, there are no mysteries of Thedas on your maps for me to discover when your scholars have picked them clean."

It takes a little while for Araceli to reply since she has to go grab a bucket for the guts and the scales, and the fish heads. Not that anyone is going to throw them out since something in Skyhold is going to eat them, be that some of the strays, some of the rats that inevitably end up in all places where people are if they can spare the poison, or perhaps the dracolisks. You could probably feed anything to a dracolisk and it wouldn't grumble or bat an eyelid.

"My place is small. Artist district so not much money unless you have a patron and of course, I am not an artist in a way that invites any sort of patron so I have a small home. A bedroom that has a curtain, a bathroom that has a door. Everything else is a big room but that is my kitchen and not all places have that since some just have a tiny space for a kitchen so you can have more space for whatever else. I picked my place just for the kitchen." Obviously she's talking about her own home, not the palace quarters she has but the place she moved to when she moved out on her own, the one she still keeps because it's handy to have it, because she'd miss it.

Because again, as much as she gets free run of the palace kitchens far more than Skyhold's, she misses having her own where she gets to dictate everything.

"Once the spices are all done, if you add a few drops of oil? A few. We can add more if we need to but we can't take it back out if there's too much." There's a little bit more authority in her voice, the same way there is when she gives a climbing lesson but she's not yelling the way she does if people just try to do things alongside her unannounced. Delegation is key. That dealt with, she looks up for a moment and laughs. "I sleep in tents when I must, I would break into rooms if I had to stay in tents here, or the barracks. I am used to a certain level of comfort."

"Will do, kadan. Don't worry, it won't be swimming in oil." Korrin's an efficient chopper/grinder, so it shouldn't be too long before she's ready for more. Still, she doesn't rush herself. Tama always impressed on her the fact that if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. No sloppiness or cutting corners, even if it takes longer.

That laugh is always music to Korrin's ears and she flashes a grin back at her love. "The barracks aren't much better, Araceli. Have you seen the single rooms? They're practically jail cells, only difference being actual doors instead of bars. Not even windows. That would eat at me. No matter how cramped the room is, there has to be a nice view. Besides, I can't imagine you with a room you couldn't climb into whenever you please." Just one entrance/exit, where's the fun in that.

The wry smile that crosses Bruce's face pretty much shows that he got Morrigan's point there. He knows that she means well, but though she doesn't know he had been there before - the fool who prided on his work, was once proud of his achievements and all that he did. The pride made him raise his head high, had made him think himself more than who he really was. And that mistake had cost him everything. He knows better than to tempt fate once more.

"It's just good to keep things in perspective," is all that he says in response. "The last thing I want to do is to have my head in the clouds." He would never want to lose himself again like that. The price for the first time had been great. He knew he was probably not going to go through a second time intact in any fashion.

"What of the year to come then? You must have some plans." Perhaps she is better to refocus lest they talk themselves in a circle, or before she might well lose her patience or say the wrong thing. Time has taught her that she does indeed do that. Some of it is on purpose, some of it not. "The dust settles in one arena yet there is much of Orlais marked by the war. Even in Serault."

Serault, the backwater of the Empire for all that it still produces beautiful things.

"The Exalted Plains ravaged by the war, who knows what state the Emerald Graves lie in. Will you turn to those places or will you remain closer to Skyhold?"

When she notices one of the elven workers watching her, she beckons the man over with the knife to demonstrate slowly with the second fish, cutting off the conversation for a while, more gesturing at Korrin's work, then at a pan. All in a low enough voice not to ruin it yet but enough so he knows what she's doing and how he might do it himself if he wants to. Cooking is meant to be shared after all and she can write this one down for him later on anyway but he seems satisfied enough to thank her and slip away again.

"Why would I go to the barracks?" Does anyone they know live in the barracks? Probably they do but Araceli thrives on being busy as well as being damn good at pretending she doesn't know the schedules of as many people as she might need to so there. "I still need to get time to paint more of the door. It's handy enough so people know exactly where to find us but it's very boring. Almost done with the spices? The fish is good to go, I need to let the marinade sit while I do the next bit."

The secrets in the snow

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I won't hold you to it

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