[CLOSED] we make every little thing so hard

[misdirection_hex]

WHO: Vandelin and Myrobalan
WHAT: Reconciliation over lunch, or so they hope.
WHEN: Early Kingsway.
WHERE: A place that claims to serve authentic northern food.
NOTES: None at the moment.

Vandelin has been wondering if perhaps he ought to reevaluate his level of investment in this meeting. Myr had happened to call at a moment of rare vulnerability, or so he wants to think, and he'd leapt at the chance out of weakness that he should be trying to squash. If they happen to end the afternoon on speaking terms again, so much the better, but he'll be just fine if they don't, won't he? It'll give him more time for uninterrupted research. He can make himself even more useful to the Inquisition without the distraction, and then nobody will think he's a weird-looking little joke anymore, and everything will be fine because friends are for losers anyway.

He would really like his cousin to be talking to him again. He knocks on Myr's door with practiced nonchalance.

Comments

[misdirection_hex]

"I want to think there's another explanation, but--" Maker help him, he can't keep from laughing now either. "Don't think I'm insulting your glyphwork, because of course it's good, but you make it sound like he thought you were rewriting the fucking Litany of Adralla. How would he even know how complex a spell was? It's not like he's ever cast one."

The very idea of a knight-commander praising a mage's spellwork to any degree is beyond absurd to Vandelin, like trying to envision a singing dog or a man walking on the ceiling. He's at no less of a loss than Myr is.

"There's no First Enchanter here; maybe now he'll think you're promotion material." He's mostly kidding.

[faithlikeaseed]

"Maybe they haven't--hadn't--any creation mages at Ostwick. At least not any who went into glyphs." Rather than using it as a stepping-stone into spirit healing because what else would you study creation for than the praise and accolades due a healer?

"But--hell if I know how he's judging complex. Might be he proctored exams now and again like Ser Clarimond and saw people sweating over those weird fucking curves on Neutralization." He drags a hand through the air in idle illustration of that bane of many an aspiring glyphworker. "Hard to draw, complex magic, same thing."

Not that his marker glyphs where anywhere near as unintuitive, thanks, but-- He gives a sputtering laugh at the thought of himself as First Enchanter. "And maybe nugs'll grow wings and fly north in the winter; he's got to be more politically apt than that. He'd promote that qunari apostate that sweet-talked First Enchanter Vivienne into making her a knight-enchanter." There's only the slightest thread of bitterness behind that. He's gotten over it. Mostly.

[misdirection_hex]

"If I ever run into anyone else from Ostwick, I'll ask. I'm sure they'd know. You know what they say about creation mages." It is a well-worn joke in Hasmal, thanks in large part to Vandelin and his entropy cohort, and Myr will be intimately familiar with it, but Van finishes it anyway. "How do you know when you've met one? Don't worry, they'll tell you." Myr can perhaps picture the old delighted smirk that accompanies this, too.

It persists throughout Myr's benefit-of-the-doubt explanation, complete with sympathetic hum at the memory of trying and failing and trying and failing to master that absurd-looking set of lines, but this last is too much, and he nearly sputters at the idea. "You're shitting me. This never happened. It can't possibly have." He laughs again, trailing off into total incredulity. "Of all the people in all of Thedas who would never allow that..."

[faithlikeaseed]

"'Don't worry, they'll tell you,'" he chimes in on the punchline, because--of course, and he's as guilty of it as any other creation mage. (Maybe, once, the joke had stung a little; now it's comforting to hear and to imagine the smirk that goes with it.)

Just as comforting is how Van's response to the idea of Vivienne unbending that much runs parallel to Myr's own. "It's what she said. I mean, there's no saying she was telling the truth about it; I couldn't see if she had a hilt on her and wasn't about to challenge her to a duel in front of the baths to verify it." Though it would be of a piece with his newfound reputation for picking (mock-)fights with people twice his size.

"But--" A helpless shrug. "We're living in strange times, Van."

[misdirection_hex]

"Stranger compromises have been made, I guess." He's here, isn't he? And promising not to talk politics, at that. Call the revered mothers; it's a verified miracle. He still doesn't believe it of the notorious Madame de Fer, the bogeyman of any mage who refused to join the loyalists and even some who gave in, but he's never actually met the woman. He wouldn't know.

"I am glad that they're not strange enough to have you sparring with qunari, though. I like you better in one piece."

[faithlikeaseed]

Oh, that's sufficient insult to Myr's pretended pride to make him puff up like an angry chickadee. "What," he mock-demands, "you think I couldn't take one just because they're three times my size? I'll have you know I could absolutely survive that fight in one piece."

Not win. He can't lie to himself that much any longer, even in jest. But he could make it through.

[misdirection_hex]

"She headbutts you, it's all over. Nobody else can say that, no matter how big they are. The horns would be the dealbreaker for me."

He hasn't asked what's become of Myr's ambitions to knight-enchanterhood. Vandelin knew Philomela as well as any other mage in the tower did. He can guess quite accurately at how it went. His stomach clenches, becomes suddenly inhospitable to the idea of food, and of course it's at that moment that the waiter finally deigns to come and take their order--

"The honeyed dormouse, please." He won't admit to that wave of guilty nausea or its cause. He'll fight it down, and by the time their food arrives, he'll be just fine.

[faithlikeaseed]

"Most of 'em are rear-curving, aren't they?" Myr retorts. He's never seen a qunari in the flesh--never will, now--but he remembers pictures. "I mean, they're bony, but it's not as if I'll get gored unless she comes at me from a weird angle."

He breaks off at the sound of the waiter's approach, utterly oblivious to his cousin's discomfort. "The same for me," since it's what they're here for and he's hardly got an option to look at a menu, besides. "And bread salad if you've got it--thanks."

Only once their server's safely away does he return to the previous topic of conversation with: "A dealbreaker, though. You'd never thought about finding a friendly one of them who doesn't follow the Qun and just--grabbing on to those?" ...All right so that's really not a question he should've asked his cousin of all people, but now that they're free of the Circle and it's actually a remote possibility it has been ratcheting around in his head.

[misdirection_hex]

He's opened his mouth to argue that the horns don't have to be pointy to cause serious damage, but even if he can't see to swing a spirit blade, Myr's still better with a barrier than any mage Vandelin knows besides Philomela herself. Fortunately, the waiter's arrival interrupts the debate he was in the process of losing, and he's all the more nostalgic for the simple cuisine of their childhood now that he has the unexpected chance to share it with his cousin again.

Myr, it seems, has other ideas about what ought to be shared between cousins, and Vandelin stops cold with his drink halfway to his mouth, eyebrows disappearing into his hair.

"Well," he says at length, "now I have." Another moment's pause, as he considers this in far more detail. If there is any small blessing here, it's that Myr can't see the look on his face, though he would chase that thought instantly away if it made itself clearer.

"I've never met one of their men, though. I can assume they're even bigger and musclier and...hornier than the women, but just imagining it doesn't do it enough justice. I'd have to see one of these giant friendly Qun-heretics in person before I could render a judgment."

[faithlikeaseed]

He uses that moment of silence to feel out his own drink and cage it between his hands, ducking his head in a spasm of mortified amusement. At least if he's saying things to Van he ought not, they can just be embarrassing, rather than the kind of thing that'll provoke an argument and leave them not speaking to each other again.

"They looked it from the--ah--illustrations I'd seen," Myr admits, lifting his head from contemplation of the table now that he's got control of his expression. "Bigger and broader in all the right dimensions. You'll have to--" tell me all about it, he'd been about to say, but the words stick in his throat for so many reasons. "--let me know if one does put on an appearance. For academic reasons; got to check the veracity of the texts and all that."

Exactly how he plans to do that without being able to see them--well, he'll come up with something. "If nothing else, the conversation'll be interesting, if he's really walked away from the Qun. Always wanted a little more insight into what breaks them out of it."