Coming through the gates of Skyhold, chilled to the bone is etched in her memory. And others. Here are people who fell from the sky with marks same as the Herald. Here comes a runner with the news you've dreaded: the Herald is dead what do we do now?
(Would it be easier, with one leader to at least give direction and some central figure to direct complaints and frustrations and all else to rather than the Inquisition and all it stands for? Privately she often thinks yes but the choosing of an individual would be the thing to tear it apart entirely.)
"War isn't in the living memory of my home. The legacy is in shaping how we conduct ourselves but adjusting to living through one and talking of it so casually has been as foreign to me as any of this," a careful gesture with the brandy glass. "But I am a captain's daughter and of a nation of sailors, sailors know when all hands are needed before the mast and to be as wary of the calm."
She takes a sip of brandy, looks down into the glass then back up at Gwenaëlle. "I think they forget what pride is. Or they'll argue over it while it all burns down and who has it worse than them and why. Pride and respect never come easy, it's working until you fall into bed at the end of the day and tearing your hair out but so many think they've done that. Because life has been hard. As if life isn't always hard in a hundred ways." There are a lot of things Araceli can't say a lot of the time but that feels good, sitting here in someone else's home, drinking brandy, to lance that particular wound even if it's small or petty or spiteful. Hold it in too long and she'll poison herself in the end.
no subject
(Would it be easier, with one leader to at least give direction and some central figure to direct complaints and frustrations and all else to rather than the Inquisition and all it stands for? Privately she often thinks yes but the choosing of an individual would be the thing to tear it apart entirely.)
"War isn't in the living memory of my home. The legacy is in shaping how we conduct ourselves but adjusting to living through one and talking of it so casually has been as foreign to me as any of this," a careful gesture with the brandy glass. "But I am a captain's daughter and of a nation of sailors, sailors know when all hands are needed before the mast and to be as wary of the calm."
She takes a sip of brandy, looks down into the glass then back up at Gwenaëlle. "I think they forget what pride is. Or they'll argue over it while it all burns down and who has it worse than them and why. Pride and respect never come easy, it's working until you fall into bed at the end of the day and tearing your hair out but so many think they've done that. Because life has been hard. As if life isn't always hard in a hundred ways." There are a lot of things Araceli can't say a lot of the time but that feels good, sitting here in someone else's home, drinking brandy, to lance that particular wound even if it's small or petty or spiteful. Hold it in too long and she'll poison herself in the end.