OPEN | "The old ways are lost," you sang as you flew

[mythalenaste]

WHO: Pel + YOU
WHAT: Open log for April/Cloudreach
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Will update with any warnings.

Arrival

Between the cramped ship and the stuffy warehouse, Pel feels like cargo. It's also hot, or it feels that way to her. Everything that was comfortable has gone, except for familiar people she doesn't know how to approach for a hug. She's not accustomed to asking for care.

So rather than her usual aloofness, Pel looks genuinely shaken, even depressed, and altogether wan and sleepless.

Early- to Mid-month

By the third day, Pel has shut herself up in a small room in the warehouse. There are frequent flashes of light underneath the door. Posted is a sign:

​I AM NOT DEAD OR POSSESSED
ANCIENT AND VERY PRECISE MAGIC BEING WORKED

If you mu​​st reach me, see the below instructions:

1. KNOCK.
2. If there is no answer, please get help.
2.a. If you are a mage and believe you can help, please do so.
2.b. If you are not a mage, please find a mage who can help.
2.b.a. Or Alistair or Knight-Commander Norrington. No other Templars.
3. If I answer, state your name and your business but do not enter.
4. If I give you EXPLICIT permission to enter, wait until all the lights you can see from under the door are gone before opening the door.
5. If I do not give you EXPLICIT permission to enter, do not enter.
5.a. Not even if you are a mage.
5.b. Not even if you are a close friend.
5.c. Not even if you think of something horrible that might be happening.
5.d. Not even if you have a delightful prank in mind.
6. If I have not come out for several days, please bring food.
6.a. NOTHING WITH EGGS IN IT.
7. If confused, please refer to the top line of this sign and read on from there.

Lowtown Bazaar

One or two days out of the month, Pel puts on a dress, girds her sword, and goes down to the bazaar. It's different from Halamshiral's slums--cleaner, with less fear and loathing. And there is a host of street food she has wanted to try out since hearing about this place.

One stall has fried Antivan doughnuts that melt on the tongue, sweet and spicy. Orlesian sweets, quiches (ew no no eggs), cakes. Broiled cheese scraped and spread like butter on peppered potatoes. Delicate crepes wrapped around candied fruit and nuts. Creamy yogurt with mint and lime. Skewers of charred beef. A massive variety of incredibly fresh seafood, seasoned and grilled on a stick or sometimes simply boiled or even raw. Rich cream cakes. Nevarran-style sausages with pickled cabbage. Vats of savory noodles. Tender chicken giblets in a spicy broth. Exotic fresh fruits. Fatty, juicy pork and pickled vegetables wrapped up in hot, crispy flatbread. Stewed intestines, fried sweet potatoes, stewed chicken with chewy dumplings. Almost all of this is incredibly cheap--not the fresh seafood, especially not the lobster, but nearly everything else. The places serving it aren't exactly clean, some downright filthy, but most of the food is delicious. Just don't get food poisoning.

Come with her on a food adventure?

Comments

[mythalenaste]

A bit of a pause.

"Um," she calls back through the door. Another pause. "Anything from accidental demon-summoning to being unable to get up from the floor. This is very ancient magic and the Veil is incredibly thin here, so I'm not sure what's going to happen. And it's really hard to get up from the floor."

[byblow]

"And you don't think you ought to have James or me in there with you to start with, just in case?"

His tone, thankfully, is more conversational than you reckless idiot—a tone that assumes there is actually a good reason why she's doing it alone and hoping someone will notice a problem.

[mythalenaste]

"I have it completely under control," she calls back confidently. "Your unwarranted presence would be an unnecessary distraction. You will be sent for if needed. That is what the sign is for."

[byblow]

"Right," Alistair says, finishing his modification to the sign. Now he sounds a little skeptical. "Do you think the demon will come ask our permission before it kills you, or...?"

[mythalenaste]

Now the door opens. Pel is scowling.

"You think I can't handle a demon?" she accuses. Her sword is at her side and her staff a few feet away.

[byblow]

Alistair—unstaffed, obviously, and also without sword or armor and with his sleeves pushed up to his elbows from much more miring work—silwntly points at her sign with his pen. Not to point out his handiwork with the wording, no. Just to point out that she's the one offering mysterious silences and the need for assistance as a possible outcome.

[mythalenaste]

She looks where he points. If confused, please refer to the top line of this sign and read on from there. She sighs, shoulders dropping, hand combing through the loose hair at the top of one braid.

"Right. Of course. I know. But it requires a lot of concentration, Alistair. And if I don't manage it, sometimes I have to start something over. And I get...nervous, being watched casting. Keepers never cast magic in public."

[byblow]

"I'm not public," Alistair says, sullen, but then he relents. "Will it ruin anything ancient and delicate if I come inside for a minute?"

[mythalenaste]

"No." She steps back, opening the door for him. "Just don't touch anything on the table. Or do anything Templarish. Or eat eggs."

[byblow]

"Well, there go all my plans," Alistair says on his way through the door, which he shuts behind him. He spends a few seconds looking at the rooms' contents, nosy and protectively wary, before he turns toward Pel and grins. "You are so pregnant."

That isn't what he wanted to talk about. But it is worth saying. Apparently. He means it as a compliment. So pregnant! And pretty for it. And still working this hard.

[mythalenaste]

She grins back at him. "Good eye!" she says. She drags two chairs relatively near each other and beckons for him to sit.

[byblow]

Good job, Alistair, making the so-pregnant lady drag chairs around—

But he sits down, anyway, a little crooked in the chair to keep facing Pel, and says, "My mother is back," with his grin still left over on his face but slowly fading into something more serious, "and my father might be alive, and I know you're not an expert just because you're..."

So pregnant. He bites his tongue.

"But I don't know whether I should tell her. It seems a bit—hullo, I know you're terribly busy leading all these rebel mages, but the man who knocked you up thirty years ago might not be dead, or might be, who really knows, but anyway enjoy whatever feelings that makes you have." Since he's being tactful today. "I mean... You don't have to tell me what I should do. I just don't really have anyone else to talk to."

[mythalenaste]

The grin is gone. Pel reaches for his hand and gives a friendly squeeze. Internally, she is slowly processing the implications of King Maric being alive. Occasionally it's easy to forget that's who Alistair means when he says "my father" and her thought is narrower and only on Alistair. But "my father could be alive" is rather more loaded a statement than anything else Alistair has to say about him. So it takes her a moment to refocus.

"I...Mythal'enaste, lethallin. That's a hard one. Probably don't tell her until you have more to go on, perhaps. But are you all right?"

[byblow]

"Yes, of course. I'm fine. I was never in love with him."

He flashes a smile. It dies very quickly.

"I always thought he must have been... I mean, taking advantage of some poor scullery maid, who couldn't have said no if she wanted to, that's... But it wasn't like that. She was a Warden. She started a war." Sort of. With some assistance. What he's actually thinking of—that she killed her rapist slave-owner as a child—isn't his secret to spill. "I'm sure she could have managed to light one stupid king on fire if she wanted to."

He shrugs, frowning at the table instead of at Pel.

"It was nice to write him off. But noooo," he says, mood lightening and sharpening, "now I have to care and go search the ends of Thedas for his blighted royal ass."

—and that's quite enough talking from him. He lets her have her hand back, belatedly, and looks sort of sheepish.

"You're right, about waiting. If she gets angry at me for keeping secrets, I can always say I got it from her."

[mythalenaste]

Say what now? Warden, war, wait what?

Pel holds up a hand. "Back up a moment. Who is this woman?"

Is it possible that Alistair's mother is even more special than his father? She sounds kinda badass. In her mind, she's raking over what she knows about shemlen wars within the lifetime of someone old enough to be Alistair's mother. A Warden, not a Fereldan rebel (probably). Met and fell in love (?) with King Maric. Maybe a Fereldan after all, and this was a pre-Warden meeting? Wardens aren't supposed to be all that fertile. She doesn't think she's heard of any Wardens starting wars. She's a mage and an elf, though. Mage, elf, Warden, started a war.

No matter what, she has to be the most interesting person Pel has ever heard of.

[byblow]

Oh.

"Grandenchanterfiona," he says, quick and quiet and behind a hand that's sheepishly rubbing his mouth.

She's definitely even more special than Maric.

[mythalenaste]

"Granden--" It takes her a second. Granden Chanter. Grand Enchanter. What was the Grand Enchanter's name again?

It clicks, and she scowls at him, takes a pillow off her cot, and playfully socks him in the face with it.

"Your parents have no right," she says with false indignancy, "to be that interesting." She tosses the pillow back on the cot. "Honestly, Alistair, if your father doesn't want to be found, I wouldn't worry about searching for his blighted royal ass. But if you do, I want you to know I will do anything for you. You have only to ask."

[byblow]

The pillow makes him grin, though it briefly dips at what she says—they really are terribly interesting, two names for the history books, worthy of whole paragraphs or possibly their own chapters, and he's—

not going to mope.

"Thank you," he says. "And thank you for not telling me to stop being a selfish prick, unloading all of this on you when you have your own problems. You could have. I should probably bring you something to say thank you. Maybe... food. Grilled potatoes?"

[mythalenaste]

Problems? She has problems? Does this look like the face of a single, outclan, eight-months-pregnant woman with problems?

"I don't have problems," she understates. "I have an incredible career, I'm starting my family, and I have the most wonderful and supportive friends anyone could ask for."

A beat.

"Are grilled potatoes all you can make?"

[byblow]

"I wasn't going to make them, Maker," Alistair says, putting a hand to his heart in shock. "I was going to get them from someone who won't kill you. But if you'd like to risk that, I do make amazing burned rabbit and Fereldan grey mash-o'-everything."