faderift | I had the strangest feeling

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I had the strangest feeling

WHO: Beleth and Thranduil, Beleth and Myr
WHAT: Hangin out with some cool elves
WHEN: Now
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: If you want a prompt, send me a message on dw or plurk!

Thranduil

Life has been busy for Beleth, but she's starting working out the rhythm of her new job and responsibilities. Schedules are made, patterns emerge, and she figures out how to find some free time. How to use it is a much easier puzzle to solve--there are some people that she hasn't gotten to visit with in a while, and she's eager to make up for lost time.

Thranduil is, naturally, one of the first she wants to see.

Of course, just showing up on someone's doorstep is rude, even if he'd probably allow it. So she takes up her crystal, sitting in one of the newly erected gardens outside of the tower.

"Thranduil, are you busy? I apologize if you are and I'm interrupting, but if you have some free time, I was hoping that you'd spare some of it for me."

Myr

Beleth had been nervous about training with Myr for a handful of reasons, some of which were quickly resolved. Her fear that she would be made to look like a noodle-limbed idiot were put to rest when she discovered that waving a staff around was not too much different than wielding a large bow. Her concern over a grown man having to instruct her in a very touchy-feely way turned out to be distractingly accurate, and Beleth was still not sure if she should be distressed or pleased by it.

Maybe it would help if she got to know Myr beyond 'strange attractive elf with low standards'. And as it stood, there was something that she had been wondering for a long time--and Myr seemed to be one of the few that she knew could answer. While the subject of her curiosity was a fairly sensitive subject...Well. Myr had been nothing but kind to her.

She'd just have to be careful to handle it with due care.

Thus, after one of their practices, Beleth lingered, catching her breath as she poured herself a cup of water. Once she felt a bit more like a person, and not a gross mess, she turned to look at Myr.

"I noticed that you had set up a group for discussing the Chant."

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There is the niggling suspicion in the back of Myr's head that this might not go so well as he thinks it will. Talking religion was contentious even back in the Circle, and now he'll be broaching the topic with one of the Dalish-- Well. So long as they're both respectful, it can't disintegrate that badly, can it? (Never mind what the Dalish do to Chantry missionaries or how that started a war once...)

Though it sounds like he's not the only one with conversion on his mind; this will be interesting, if nothing else. "We didn't hear much of the Creators in the alienage, no," he replies, amiably. "Other than a few stories. I was always fond of 'How the Halla Came to Be'.

"But that's all they were to us--stories. The Chant was real, the way Father and Uncle Vardren taught it. So I believed from a very young age."

He pauses to consider his next words carefully; it would be easy enough to leave things at that, to make the "choice" to worship the Maker no choice at all, simply a result of his upbringing. But it's hardly true. "I suppose I didn't choose until I was much older, and saw the Maker's hand in my life and how I'd come to be where I was. Magic is His gift to us, a source of miracles even when He has turned away from the world. I held that gift in my hands--all the powers of creation He used to shape the world in the first place."

His voice has grown steadily softer as he speaks; this is a thing of reverence, shared gladly but with the respect it deserves. "It still seems like a miracle to me, even to this day. He chose me to be a mage; how could I do anything but believe?"

Beleth listens intently to Myr's words, adding little Hmms and Ahs where appropriate, to let him know that she's following along. It seems to go pretty much how she would expect it to go, and she even gives a soft laugh at Myr's favored story--it was a good one, after all.

Then he continues, and she abruptly halts her steps. She leans in closer as Myr talks, arm pressed against his arm, but doesn't say anything else until he's finished. When she does speak, her voice is likewise soft, but her tone is one of fascination. "I've...I don't think I've ever heard anyone explain it like that. That...makes a great deal of sense, Myr." More so than anything that any of the shemlen have told her about the Maker thus far.

"I've heard magic spoken about like some kind of curse, like it was something inflicted on them. But you make it sound like a gift." Her tone is definitely warm as she speaks, and she gives his arm a little squeeze. "I like the way that you look at it."

There's a pause, and then she decides--well. She's asked Myr something rather personal. It can't hurt to offer up something of herself. "...When I was born, they thought I was going to be a mage. A powerful one. But--" And she gives a little, dry laugh. "--That, obviously, was wrong. I just turned out to be me." Her tone of voice implies that this was far less than the ideal turnout. "I think I would feel similar to you, had I been a mage."

"It's easy," Myr says, still quiet, "to distort the plain text of the Chant. To teach it wrong and make magic out to be something other than gift. All the same, it's not so hard to look at the cost and the risk of it--and at the awful power a mage's got at her fingertips--and be afraid. To feel like you're going to collapse under the weight of that responsibility on your shoulders."

But she didn't come out here to hear lectures from him on the subject (the warmth in her tone and the touch on his arm don't go unnoticed) and he breaks into a smile that's rueful and a little abashed at once. "Glad to offer another perspective, though."

And when she gives him one in turn, holding out a vulnerable part of herself--a memory that still sounds so raw-- He's taken momentarily aback, silenced by the idea of a family who would want a mage child so much they'd be disappointed in anything less. (Even stunned wordless by the thought he's not devoid of his native empathy; he reaches to touch her arm in turn, sympathetic.) "I'm glad to know that," he says at length. "But I'm also glad to know you as you are; there's not any 'just' about you. Magic's only one gift the Maker gives His children--and it seems to me you've made much of the ones you did receive." Leading an entire division of the Inquisition's not a small thing, after all.

Beleth almost feels guilty that she's relieved he can't see her, so he's spared the utterly idiotic look of surprise and then sudden embarrassment, face burning red. It's so stupid, how moves she feels by such simple reassurances, but. She can't help it. His gentle touch, the words--telling her that he's glad to know her as she is, that she's somehow enough--It's stupid, stupid stupid stupid, but it doesn't make the warm feeling in her chest--or her cheeks--go away.

Sylaise grant her strength. And maybe enough self confidence to not be so easily swayed.

"I--ah. Thank you. That...means a lot." She tries to think of something else to say, without sounding like some star-struck teenage girl, and eventually settles for changing the subject entirely.

"Your perspective is exactly what I want. I--I have this goal." Now she can start talking like an adult, voice raising and gaining surety as she begins to explain that goal she's been harboring, and working so hard for. "The animosity between the Dalish and the city elves is...idiotic. It's worse than idiotic, it's destructive. The only people who benefit are those who stand to gain in the face of elven misery." She's not saying the humans, but. It's the humans.

"We aren't multiple peoples spread out over Thedas. We're supposed to be one people, with groups among us who have made different choices. But we all need to understand those choices, so we can understand each other." There's excitement in her voice, passion--it's clearly important to her, and she puts her hand over the one Myr has rested on her, giving it a squeeze. "That's why I'm asking these questions. I want to know you, Myr. And understand who you are. So other Dalish can, too."

"You're welcome." It costs so little to be kind, and it sounds to him like she's in need of more kindness in her life besides.

...But he's no stranger to the idea kindness can be difficult to accept; the subject change comes as no surprise to him. The sudden animation in her tone, though--if he hadn't already been paying her his complete attention, that would make him prick up his ears. He turns his face toward her to show himself listening; makes a noise in the back of his throat that's half a humorless laugh at the idea of who stands to gain from elven misery. As much as the lessons of the alienage had attenuated in the Circle, he knows who she means even as he wishes it weren't so.

Yet the whole scope of the project she lays out is sufficient to dissolve that moment's despair into gladness. (It isn't a goal easily met; the practical part of him is already worrying away at just what an accord might mean, and who might have to give up what treasured beliefs to maintain the peace, and-- He shoves that down and silences it. You don't take a dream someone's handed you and start remarking on the feasibility.) "That's wonderful," in more senses of the word than one, though he means it earnestly. "And something I've--wondered myself, if it couldn't be made to work. We're all of us cousins, wherever we live or whatever we believe in.

"Whatever I can do to help you with that--whatever I can explain--I'm glad to. You truly think they'd be interested?" There's a certain fleeting hint of trepidation in his tone; hard to think they'd have aught to do with him, flat-ear that he is. But--Beleth had, and Sina had, and maybe they're not so unusual among their people as he'd thought. "Because I surely am, in learning more of you."

She can't help but grin when Myr seems to approve of her goals. Sometimes, she wonders if she isn't just...deluding herself, whether it would work, or whether anyone else would want it to.

"Not all of them will be interested," Beleth admits, not wanting Myr to get the idea that she thinks this will be any kind of easy goal. "There will always be some who will never be convinced, who will never admit that city elves could be part of us. But they are short-sighted fools, who have forgotten the very mission of the Dalish." Her words are laced with derision, and in this, at least, she's openly judgmental.

"There will also be plenty that are initially opposed, but can be convinced. It will just take time, and persuasive speech. They aren't short-sighted, they're just cautious, and when they see that this isn't a fool's errand, they're agree." She nods firmly. "I know that the picture I'm painting won't be easy. It'll take a lot of effort, and a lot of time. Maybe more than I have. But that doesn't mean I should just...not do it. Establishing a foundation is just as important as the rest of it will be."

She pauses, then gives a dry laugh. "I'm sorry, I--I don't talk about this a lot, so when I do, I tend to...go on. And on. But I'm glad that you're on board, Myr. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that I'm not...trying to be rude. Or convert you."

If it is all a fond delusion, it's one at least one other hopeless optimist on Thedas can buy into. That's got to count for something.

But hopeless optimism or not, Myr knows enough of the world--albeit at second- and third-hand--to know things aren't ever storybook-easy. The way Beleth outlines the problems gets a rueful smile out of him, even as he's nodding along and noting them away for later. "I can't say I speak for anyone outside the Circles," or everyone within them; though even if he and Van differ on so much there's still places of similarity when it comes to their people, "but I remember enough of the alienage to know it'll be an uphill battle both ways."

It's an enormous task. It's a lifetime's task, as she rightly surmises, and he gives her arm another squeeze--reassurance, maybe, and agreement. "You're likely right--but a foundation is a place to stand for whoever comes after you, and every greater thing in this world is built from smaller pieces like that.

"Don't apologize," he adds, smile widening. "Really--it's worth hearing about at length. You're not offending me any by asking me what I believe. Not when you listen to the answers."

If only everyone who asked those questions did the same. He's not in the market to be converted away from the Maker he loves; it makes it easier to know that's not her aim. But even if not... "I'd like to hear more of the Creators, though. What draws you to them? Whose," he draws his hand back from her arm to gesture at his face; he can't remember vallaslin, but the translation comes easily enough to his tongue when he reaches for it, "blood-writing is it you wear?"

Beleth doesn't have much to add to that. The politics of the Dalish come easily to her, and the politics of the humans almost so. After all, she's managed to get this far--and she rather enjoys it, really. But the city elves are her blind spot. She doesn't understand them, and she isn't sure how she'll sway them to her side. She just knows that she must, if this is to work.

"Everything important is an uphill battle," She replies. "I'm prepared to fight for it."

But his own question catches her off guard. Well. No one has ever asked her why she believes in the Creators--they are the gods of the Dalish, and she is Dalish, and that has probably satisfied everyone else. "Well, like you, I was introduced to them by my family. Most of the Dalish who came with me aren't believers, but..." She trails off, taking some time to think over her words. "...There's this feeling of belonging, of having beings who are so powerful care for me so much. The Creators gave us all the knowledge and skills that make us who we are. And some day, they'll come back, and they'll go back to helping us, and making everything right again. It's...comforting."

It's not something that she's ever done much critical thinking on, really. The Creators are as much of a part of her life as her own family, they're there because they're hers. And no one has ever done an exalted march against the Dalish under their name, so.

"My vallaslin is dedicated to Sylaise, the hearthkeeper. She brought domestic arts to us, and showed us how to heal with herbs and magic. I chose her as my guide, because I believe such skills to save lives are as important as the skills to take them." There's a pause, then hesitantly: "If you want...you can feel the vallaslin. To...learn what it looks like."

"And some day, they'll come back, and they'll go back to helping us, and making everything right again."

There's so much in what Beleth says of her gods that's familiar to Myr--but that, that catches him through the chest. The stories of the Creators they had in the alienage--lovely, sad, fragmented things fractured off a larger mythos--never mentioned them as gone the way the Maker was. Only distant and unreal, ephemeral as mist, heartening to think upon but never something you could pray to. But to hear they're also missing--even if they are false gods, there's a very real echo of the forlorn abandonment at the core of his own faith and the hope that persisted in spite of it. The soul yearns to believe in something outside itself.

He's taken briefly aback by her offer; given the gravity of their conversation, it seems an oddly intimate thing. (Besides which, he's not yet accustomed to the idea of reading a stranger's face this way--his Circlemates in Hasmal were close as kin.) Yet-- "If it's not too much of an intrusion," he noticed the hesitation, "I'd like that very much." And he offers her both his hands, palms up; she may have given him tacit permission but it's not for him to grope around and poke her in the eye. That would rather ruin the moment.

As might his next questions, now that he's had time to formulate them: "Where did the Creators go? Why did they leave you?"

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I had the strangest feeling

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