Tell all the neighbors to start knocking down walls (Catchall)

[youwonscience]

WHO: Cosima Niehaus, Wren Coupe, Anders, TBA?
WHAT: Catchall for Bloomingtide
WHEN: Throughout the month
WHERE: Various in Kirkwall
NOTES: While this isn't technically an open post as such, please don't be shy about grabbing me on DM/plurk/discord if you want to hash out a starter.

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[youwonscience]

"It's, um. Better than the alternative of not getting back would have been, so there's that?" Cosima rubs the back of her neck, idly glancing over the spread of papers. "I guess it's weird that I thought of Skyhold as 'home' at all, but I guess I sort of did? Or like ... the way you think of a camp as 'home' relative to the rest of the woods while you're there at least. Does that make any sense?"

She is actively trying to use metaphors that might translate. Progress?

"How've you been?"

[limier]

"You'd been there some time, yes? There is no disloyalty in finding some peace of a place. Maker knows you'd as much claim to it as anyone there."

No one still living could have called Skyhold home before the Inquisition encamped. Wren leans back in her seat, makes a conscious effort to — look, well, however it is that relaxed people look. It's a bad impression. She gives up in short order,

"Better than had we stayed," She admits, with a slight shrug that acknowledges yeah, that's still a pretty low bar for both of us. "Though some days it feels as though we carried it with us."

As if knowing of the future might confirm it. A foolish fear: They've already taken steps to see that course changed. And yet,

"Kirkwall, at least, is one fuck of a distraction."

[youwonscience]

Cosima laughs a little. "It is that. I'd heard some about Kirkwall, before I came, but the reality is ..." She trails off, looking for the best way to describe it.

"I mean, I guess it's kind of obvious, but I'd never been in a part of Thedas where people actually live? Of course people were living in Skyhold, but it was a fortress with like, a tent city outside, that's not the same. And I knew there was a whole world out here, like, all of you are from the rest of it, but it's just. It's different to seeing it, you know?"

She isn't sure how much sense it makes, but at least she's pretty sure Wren won't be annoyed by her attempts to describe a really weird situation.

[limier]

"More real, perhaps."

Her chin tips in consideration. There's no fitting comparison for the situation, really — save maybe that other time. To break from the Gallows and find the landscape beyond it plunged into something beyond easy understanding. Even then, there'd been some context to own.

But an alien world, with all its strange entanglements? Easier to hold that a distance, when one might confront it only in pieces. Less overwhelming; adrift in a sea of lives who can't conceive of the one you left behind.

"The first time I saw Val Royeaux, I could not believe how many people there were. All of them with their own private histories, hopes. We are such a tight presence here... the reminder may do us good."

"Your home, it has cities, yes?"

She can't imagine you could support a university without them, but if there's anything she's learned of their disparate guests, it's how madly different some of their own homes are.

[youwonscience]

"Mm, yeah. Big ones. I grew up in a city, it's what I'm used to." Even Kirkwall is small by her standards, though Cosima's been surprised by how familiar it feels in some ways. Differences in technology and culture aside, it seems that when you gather enough people together in a given area, some recognizable patterns begin to emerge.

"What about you? I know that Orlais has some bigger cities than the ones I've seen here, but are you from one, or somewhere smaller?"

[limier]

"A town called Charlans — very east. Pigs and sheep."

"I came to the capital when I was fifteen." A gesture, vague. Difficult to say that you live in a city when you spend your days above it, else far beyond its walls. "If you ask anyone here of Val Royeaux, they shall each account her differently. But she was a wonder, at the time."

"Had you ever been beyond a city before?"

[youwonscience]

"Now and then, sure." Cosima shrugs. "We'd go camping as a family when I was younger, sometimes, and I took a trip with a friend after finishing one level of schooling where we mainly visited small towns." To her credit, Cosima doesn't even really try to properly describe the concept of a road trip.

"But not to live, no. Everywhere I've lived has been big enough to count as a city, or at least the outskirts of one. I'd like to see Val Royeaux one day. The university, especially, but in general - I've heard a lot." A lot of different things, too, as Wren observed herself.