faderift | [open] we ask that life be kind

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[open] we ask that life be kind

WHO: Sina, the greater Kirkwall populace (including you)
WHAT: dealing with the magic forest backlash
WHEN: early August
WHERE: the steps of the former Chantry
NOTES: with regard to this fiasco

It's early morning, but past sunrise, so many people are still on their way to their daily occupations when a small Dalish elf takes up residence on the steps of what used to be the Chantry and is now a very condensed forest. She's brought with her supplies to see her through the day: a few snacks and plenty to work on, mainly grinding herbs and creating poultices and tea blends, unremarkable and nonmagical activities to put people at ease.
Sina has paid little mind to the guards around the garden's perimeter, apart from offering each of them a bit of dried fruit for their trouble, and she has more of the same for anyone who comes to talk to her. To each, the message is the same: it was me, I did this for you, and there is no reason to be afraid.

Of course, there is a reasonable contingent of those who prefer to shout and carry on, some simply grieving over their chantry and their lack of control in repurposing it, some insisting this is Dalish trickery that should be punished. To both, she listens and says little, with apologies to the former group and polite deflections to the latter.

Over the course of the day she finds herself joined by an assortment of people from the street, who come and go in their efforts to make coin or simply occupy themselves: the occasional musician, bored children, beggars. Sometimes they interact with Sina and sometimes they don't, but regardless, she hold her vigil and, to a degree, actually enjoys it.

Perhaps it doesn't help at all. But whatever the case, the people of Kirkwall who care to look will find a face and a voice connected to the sudden forest, as well as a pointed listening ear and a giving hand.

[Feel free to approach sometime during the day, or we can arrange an interaction after!]

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When Sina looks at him, her motion is a bit weary, but she quickly gathers that he's not going to pick up on that sort of thing. She smiles nonetheless, to see one of her own approach.
"Keeper magic," she replies, "it's ancient and difficult to explain, but it has done its part to protect the elvhen over many ages." Patting the ground beside her, she makes sure the light slap on the pavement is audible. "Will you sit with me, lethallin?"

Myr can hear the smile in her voice, and that gives him a little heart. It's difficult to maintain holy awe in the face of someone who sounds that normal and friendly--one that invites him to sit with her, even.

He's not so impolite or afraid he won't take an offer that kindly made. "Sure," he says, after a moment's hesitation. "Although I don't--I don't speak much of the language." Or any of it.

Carefully, using staff and shod feet, he feels his way over to where Sina's sitting and takes a seat beside her.

Sina gives a silent 'ah' as he sits-- she doesn't even hear herself using the language, most days. "It's... friend," she explains, "but for elves. Blood of my blood." She folds her hands, looking out toward Hightown again.
"What do you think?" she asks.

"Oh. It's...lovely." And a little painful and strange, calling up echoes of the fragmented bits they'd spoken back in the alienage. The bits Myr had let himself forget over the years, as he'd learned instead the complicated vocabulary of magic and war. And: "Thank you."

He isn't entirely sure what he's thanking her for, but the unexpected offer of kinship seems like it's worth thanks. Maker knows he could use it.

"Of the forest? It's wonderful. I can understand--their grief, their concern, and in some ways I likely ought to share it." That crater had been the grave of a hundred of his brothers and sisters in the faith, after all. "But all the same I wish I could do that. Give people a gift like that."

She nods in response, realizes he can't see her, and adds a gentle "mmhmm," to indicate that it's not a big deal.
"I can understand as well." Sina picks up her mortar and pestle again, beginning to grind methodically as she speaks. "When I made it, I wasn't thinking of anything but the life growing within it, how it could help. I admit the Chantry and its nuance is strange to me, but I understand holiness and places that are sacred." Grind, grind. "My hope is that the people of Kirkwall can come to see it as I do, a place of safety and shelter that provides endless food and medicine. Much like a Chantry, as I understand it. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that was my intention."

He tips his head unconsciously toward the sound of her grinding herbs; it's oddly soothing to listen to, a better background for their conversation than the nearby suspicious muttering of the crowd. He's as intent about what she's actually saying--and the words give him a long moment's pause, as he turns them around in his mind to examine them from all angles.

In a way, it's almost a perfect thought exercise, of the kind he used to debate with his Circle-mates so long ago. What's the better balm to the suffering of the world, Chantries or gardens?

But this time it's no academic exercise, and there's no perfectly reasoned answer to give to it. There might be a good one, though. "A Chantry provides spiritual food and medicine," he says, quietly. "Which are just as necessary to us as their physical counterparts. We need them to feed our faith in the Maker and bind up the wounds sin inflicts on our hearts.

"But--as the Chantry Mothers often remind us--it's difficult to feel the Maker's presence in our lives over the pinch of an empty belly, and therein lies part of our duty to the poor." He turns his face toward the forest, considering it silently for a long moment. There's other words he wants to say about how it's a reminder of the Maker's majesty, and so on, and so forth, but those--seem a little hollow when he's sitting beside a distant kinswoman who knows much, much more about the real majesty of the wilds.

"So I think it's a good gift, if not a replacement for their Chantry. They'll need a new one of those, too."

Edited (minor text fixes) 2017-08-03 22:34 (UTC)

If nothing else, it was already a garden; she only pushed it into... far more than a garden.
"To my people-- our people, life itself is the most sacred," she replies, "surviving this long, maintaining our culture. A forest is a place of providence and home." She pauses her grinding briefly to think.
"I can see why some may not think of it this way. But would anyone want the Chantry to be put here again, in this place of death? I thought that's why it was made a garden in the first place. To remember the fallen and provide comfort."

A part of him--the zealous, pigheaded Andrastian part that contested so often and so bitterly with Van when they were younger--wants to protest what he's hearing. He squashes it firmly in favor of clearing away his preconceptions so he can truly listen. (Another twinge in his heart at "our people," at being included in something he'd never thought himself part of.)

There's so much she puts into so few words, so many ideas he wants to pursue with eager questions, so many assumptions about the world he wants to explore. At the same time, she's seeking answers, too, and there's something about her that makes him want to give them freely.

Maybe it's got something to do with the eroding, prickling magic of the anchor shard she carries--which he knows enough now to understand is a death sentence. Maybe it's simply that she's called him kin.

"To someone who's lived all his life in a city--a forest can be a place of fear, of danger. It's beyond what we know, and monsters hide in the unknown." He rolls his staff absently beneath his fingers where it's resting beside him on the steps, feeling the grain of wood. "Even in this one, small and lovely as it is, I felt I could get lost and come to grief." Some of that certainly owed to his blindness, but even so...

"You're right, though. I mean--there's surely some who thought the new should be rebuilt on the ashes of the old, as defiance to the monster who did this." It's certainly got its appeal to him; if he ever meets that bastard himself-- "But a memorial is better. I think..."

He lets the thought trail off, turning his face back toward the madding crowd. "...it's that they had no choice in it. That was their garden, their peace with what had happened. And now it's gone, without their input. In a small way, it's as if it happened all over again. --Though I say that without blaming you. You acted without malice; the same can't be said of Anders." That last word is bitter with pain; Myr's got little love for someone who conspired to destroy his world.

"Perhaps merging the unfamiliar with the familiar is one way, a safe way, to introduce those comfortable with one world to the beauty of another." She looks slightly guilty as he continues, but doesn't deny it.
"For that I'm sorry. For generations our lands have been built on, our People chased out, killed, or subjugated, with no input from us. But... vengeance wasn't the purpose of this. And I hate to think it would be seen that way. It's just..... difficult to forget, when this is one slight in the face of so many."
She looks down at her hands. "But... it is done. It's made. And I can't unmake it, so we must look to one another to determine how to move forward."

"Maybe," he replies, breaking into a smile. "I did go in there, after all, danger or not."

And then he flinches as if struck, turning his face away from her in shame. What was that he told Cosima about his ability to say spectacularly stupid things? "Of course," he says, softly, "And in the face of all that, gifting them back a better garden seems like mercy, like charity, whether or not they wanted a change to what they had. I'm sorry if it seemed I thought otherwise."

He reaches out in her direction, hesitant and fumbling, to pat her hand or whatever his fingers might encounter first. This is territory as new as the forest to him. "The world is full of unearned suffering, and whatever we do to improve that--to put aside what's been done to us and do better to others--is to the good. It's made. You did something worthy, and I'll pray the people of Kirkwall come to understand that in time.

"To say nothing of trying to persuade them of it myself. Thank you for this."

Edited 2017-08-07 08:04 (UTC)

Sina nods solemnly to herself, and isn't expecting the pat when it comes, but is at least able to see it before it happens. She smiles down at Myr's hand and curls her own around it, confirming that he's found it. "I thank you as well, lethallin," she says softly, "for letting me know you at all." Some city elves can be very cagey and hostile to the Dalish, and though Sina doesn't begrudge them that, it's always a relief to find common ground in those who have adapted so differently.

...Oh.

He gives her fingers a brief squeeze, at a loss for words in reply. His earlier anxiety about even approaching her seems foolish now; she's neither a monster nor the hostile, rightfully superior outsider he'd expected.

And, she thanked him.

"It's my pleasure, cousin." He can't use the elvish word; he's not even sure it's something he should be using, whether he has a right to it. He'll come as near as he can in Trade. "Glad to have the opportunity.

"I'm Myr--Myrobalan Shivana."

If he were to use it, she'd show no offense, but Sina also has no expectation that he will. Being with city elves has taught her much.
"Siuona," she replies, "First of Clan Dahlasanor. Most know me as Sina."

"Sina," Myr echoes, fixing the name beside her voice in his mind. "And the First--you'd be the next to be Keeper?" He thinks that's the way it's organized. There wasn't so much reading on Dalish mages he'd been able to get his hands on, but there'd been a little.

"Yes," she confirms with a widening smile, though there's an unspoken sadness to it-- it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "In line to be Keeper when she moves on."

He isn't sure how to ask the next question. Perhaps it's best to simply get it over with, though he pitches his voice low and lets his own worry leak through: "Will you make it?"

If Myr could see her, he'd see how Sina's face falls and looks a bit like someone just shoved her in the chest. She breathes out quietly, looking down at the ground, and bites her lip before answering.
"I've begun to think not," she admits, with a strange calm. Perhaps it's forced.

He's no stranger himself to saying things he means in tones he doesn't, and knows far better than to pry at someone else's defenses.

Which doesn't unask the question, but there it is.

"I'm sorry." Quiet and earnest--and something he's not going to dwell on.

Instead, he tips his head back, turning his face to the late-afternoon light. "...Did you start all of this from seeds? I've done that before with smaller things--wheat, herbs--but I don't have the power to do more than give them a few days' head start."

This is the first time the subject has been broached so openly, and Sina feels strange about it. Everyone's time is finite, but this man is quietly apologizing for her confirmation. She doesn't know when it will be over, but an instinct in the back of her mind tells her it's coming. Somewhere along the way, the point of no return was passed. It's too late.
Sina is almost too distracted to answer Myr's question, and gives a shaky laugh. "Yes, of course," she says lightly, "even magic can't make something out of nothing." Life out of death. When it tries, it just makes husks.

Death, in Myr's world, is something that comes suddenly for apprentices near Sina's age, bearing them off when they fail their Harrowings. In that light her grief and hard-fought calm make perfect sense; there were any number of young Hasmal apprentices who faced the prospect of their own doom in the same way.

Except with a Harrowing there's always a chance of eucatastrophe at the end, the new-made mage returning to her Circle alive.

Not so here.

"Though we might try," he replies, with a smile. And how world-shaking would it be if they could manage it... "That's why they all came into fruit together at once. Will they stay like that, over the years? Or will the apples remember they're after the plums, over time?"

Sina smiles, her demeanor softening as she looks back toward the forest. "I don't know," she admits, "it's up to them now, to decide." Presumably they will eventually bend to weather patterns, but she has no way of knowing. And never will.

It's up to them now, to decide.

Myr's own smile widens at that, though it's more wistful than happy. "Isn't it always?" It could as justly be said about the crowd around them, he thinks.

"...I wouldn't mind sitting here a little while longer, if that's all right with you." He's actually run out of questions for once, but it's lovely out here in the sunshine even despite the protestors. Who, once he's had a little longer to soak in the sunshine, he's inclined to go have a peacable discussion or two with.

Her smile broadens, and though Myr may not see it, he can likely hear it in her voice. "It is," she agrees.
"Be my guest." She gives his hand a squeeze before pulling hers away, looking out at the modest crowd once again. Though she remains where she is, once he wanders away to talk to them, Sina feels the pinch of anxiety soften slightly. It may not fix everything, but he's helping, and she's made a friend, and that's really all one can ask.

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[open] we ask that life be kind

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