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

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

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 must 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?

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The sign is mildly amusing, enough to shake him out of his constant awareness of the place feeling like it's closing in around him. Anders raps on the door while focusing on his own breathing; there's no reason to stress her out further.

"Pel? It's Anders, here to check on you and the little one. Is now a good time?"

"Just a minute!"

The lights go off. The door opens. Pel looks pale and wan, but alert.

"Aneth ara. Come in."

He nods to her as he comes in.

"I don't get to see the light show? I feel left out." His voice is strained, but he's trying to make it clearly a joke. "How have you been feeling? Better than the docks, I hope." He'd seen her upset, but he'd been so stressed and sick himself that he couldn't help anyone else.

"Much better." A small smile. She heads to her bedroll and begins the precarious process of sitting down. "Do you need me to undress?"

There's no shame anymore.

"Just the leggings, the tunic can stay in place." This is something he'd missed about Kirkwall - he'd had the time to become familiar with his expectant mothers and reach a comfortable, casual understanding of expectations and exams and the like. Being on the run, or seeing a refugee just as she's ready to deliver, mean the mother's more anxious and everything is a little more complicated.

"Any new pain or symptoms?" Anders holds out an arm to help her get down.

Bless you, Anders. She accepts the help with a quiet serannas and gets down, leans back to strip off the leggings (awkwardly, because bending in the middle).

"Not pain, but I'm having...I can only describe them as twinges. It's definitely not her, it's very different from when she's dancing, as she does. It's like monthly pains, only not painful. Is that what you described before, the sort of false labor?"

She lies back and realizes it's the first time she's been off her feet all day. It feels amazing.

"Very likely, yes." Anders kneels at her feet, taking note of her swollen ankles. "You're going to need to be off your feet more, Pel, and to put them up some. I know you don't like inaction, but resting is important."

His tone is deliberately gentle. He wouldn't like being told to rest more; there's no reason to think she would. Then he's shifting her tunic out of the way and taking a look and feel, examining her abdomen and taking note of where the baby's head is. "Mm. Right where we want her head to be. ...For delivery. I'm certain her dancing in this position isn't making you that happy."

Anders gives her a small smile. "The twinges are definitely that, and nothing to be concerned with, you'll be glad to know. Are there any other questions? Most everything seems to be in order."

See, Anders makes everything seem okay when he says things like that. Anders talks like this is going splendidly and not like her life is in upheaval and her own parents haven't rejected her for this grandchild. She smiles, and since he's seen pretty much every other part of her in a professional capacity, she's not reserved about smiling even with her self-perceived weird smile.

"I can cast spells with my feet up. Sleeping is harder. I can't get in a comfortable position anymore. Especially since I have to get up a couple of times a night anyway."

"I've cast some spells with my feet up," he says with a return smile that makes his eyes dance as he puts her tunic back in place. "From what I heard, there's no position that is comfortable, or stays so for long. But if you can round up a collection of pillows, you could make a sort of pile that could alleviate some of the pressure. I'm sorry it's all supposition, and I'm sorry that that will likely be difficult to climb out of."

Shifting back onto his heels, Anders shakes his head. "At this point there's not a lot to be done save adjusting and waiting. I can ease Creation magic into the worst of the joints that are causing you issues, but beyond that I'm limited. You're sipping water with mint?"

"Also ginger. Everyone is an expert on pregnancy, especially men." It's spoken with a heavy dose of irony, though not aimed at him, as he is a healer. "Especially men with wives," she clarifies. "I have piles of ginger root and oils for my skin. Because apparently the worst thing that could come of this is stretch marks."

Piles of ginger, she can take. The nausea has been unending since she got pregnant in the first place. She sits up with some effort.

"Sam says--he was one of the ones who went into the future. He says it's a little girl."

He snorts about the experts. Men make the worst patients, and seem to assume that they know everything which makes everything more difficult than it needs to be.

"I could confirm the gender if you'd like. I've been able to for a few months, but most mothers don't want to have that solid knowledge before that." There's also the whole thing about the future not being set yet until it happens, and hearing some people hoped to change it. Anything can happen.

Her heart leaps a little. So much of what she heard of the future was terrible. Maybe this one solid handhold can let her dodge the rest. And she wants to know. She wants to know whether the mother who gave her away will pass a legacy to a granddaughter, and whether a dear friend will have a namesake.

"Would you?"

"I'd hardly offer and not do it," he says with a chuckle. Anders holds out his hand, casting again and reaching inward. A few moments later he opens his eyes again and nods, smiling happily.

"You've a girl on the way, Pel."

She breaks into a massive smile. Unknowing, her eyes mist over.

"I'm not supposed to care," she qualifies with a laugh. "I know it wouldn't really matter to me either way, in the end. But when I was sent to Clan Ashara, my mother sent with me this ring."

She pulls out a cord from her tunic. Strung on it is a halla-antler pendant and a ring with a green amber stone.

"It was passed down through the oldest girls in our line since Halamshiral. I always wanted to know I would pass it down to my daughter. I wanted to keep the line going. I know it's silly, and I wouldn't love a son any less."

Anders leans forward to touch the ring and look at it a little more closely before leaning back again.

"It's lovely, and it's not silly. I'm certain you'd care just as much for a boy." Some he couldn't say that to. Some had clear preferences for what their baby was supposed to be, and he could only hope for the infant's sake that it lined up. Some people simply weren't meant to be parents. Pel, though, he has confidence in.

"Perhaps wait a few years, though. Everything goes in a baby's mouth, and something that shines would be quite the target for that."

Her smile tightens.

"I think it was given to Keeper Deheune to give to me when I was old enough." She turns it in her hand for him to examine further. "I always thought you could see the forest in this stone. That's how it always looked to me, anyway. I don't know if Little Sina will grow up in an alienage. If she does, she'll be able to see the forest in this. Her grandmother...my mother won't approve. My mother would probably prefer I return it. But my daughter won't be denied her heritage, not from me."

She is wilting. After a moment, she clutches the ring, warming it in her hand.

"My parents won't come be here for this. They won't see her at all."

He takes the opening, looking it over. It's a pretty piece, and it must be nice to have a tie to one's family, he thinks, until the conversation turns. Anders tilts his head, frowning.

"Pel? What's gone on? Why would your mother want you to return something traditionally given?"

Her gaze falls.

"I left my clan. I'm pregnant with a flat-ear's bastard. I wrote to them and they wrote back: they don't want us. So it's going to be just me and Little Sina. And Cyril and Merrick, when they're not out changing the world."

Slowly he reaches over and takes the hand holding tight to the ring. A half-dozen joking replies about 'and I thought being tossed out for accidentally setting the barn on fire' come to mind and are dismissed. It would work with some people, at some times. This doesn't seem to be the right place and time.

"You know it's not just you, though, right? I'm not Dalish, but I'll be around. There are others... It's not like we can replace what you've lost here, and it's not like we can or even should act Dalish for you, but you've friends. Alistair, um, Norrington? And there are others. You're not alone."

"I know." Her face is impassive, but she is unusually tense. Her shoulders are hunched when they are normally square, and she doesn't look at Anders. "My head knows it. But no amount of thinking has kept me from being afraid. Once this is over, if we win, what am I going to do? How can I work a job and care for a child without a clan?"

He's quiet for several moments. He's a Grey Warden, as is Alistair, which means there can be no promises about being around.

"The same thing many single parents do. They find a job they can do while watching their child, or they ask their friends for assistance. You've friends, Pel. You'll find a position that's near some of them, and it will work out. Or you'll find someone you want to pair your life with, and they'll help, or so on."

She thinks about James. She wonders if he would ever take her back, if he's her last hope. She nods.

"Right." She glances at him. "I'm...not really accustomed to this. Desperate and needy. I'm accustomed to being Keeper's First. There's a lot of pride that comes with that. I should go about the ways of getting used to this."

The relic Pel is making is very ancient magic. Magic which is the biggest evidence that elves were immortal, because it takes so very long to cast. Pel has studied the shield at Dirthamen, and she has studied Skyhold, but her own attempts look crude by comparison.

She invites Merrill into the room to have a look. Merrill was also at Dirthamen, and knows what it is she's trying to accomplish: magical fortification for the crumbling Gallows. Pel has studied this for a year now, made smaller relics, but this is so much bigger than her. She needs help.

On the table is an unassuming statuette, eroded over the millennia, but definitely ancient elven. Pel has found that artifacts from Elvhenan are more receptive to the magic she is casting.

"It's like trying to plug a dozen holes with only your fingers," she sighs. "My head might be too far into it to see what needs to be done."

Magic can be as easy as breathing or as hard as breathing underwater. Merrill knows this as well as Pel does, knows also that it can be the most difficult when trying to teach yourself something new. There are no teachers for this, not that they know of. They have themselves and their discoveries only, their heads only.

Merrill brings the Circle books that Cassandra gave her when she comes; the teachings are similar enough, but there are other theories. They cannot afford to be picky about the theories they look into. Merrill says nothing about blood magic, will say nothing until they seem to have no other options. She is steady, stalwart, and she offers Pel a smile.

"More fingers, maybe," she offers, and it's only half a joke.

That earns a smile.

"A late-night research session? I hope you have your own bedroll. If you do, I can provide the food."

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

Early month

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