faderift | Her dirty paws and furry coat

[In the shadow of Sundermount over the past month a house took shape and in that house there is a witch. The plants that had grown on her window sills in Skyhold bloom outside but do not mistake it for anything less than a home of the Witch of the Wilds.

Those with an invitation are always welcome but to those stumbling upon it, the lost, the too curious for their own good, the unwary there's a lock to contend with. Spells too.

This is Morrigan's home after all, she did give a warning 'tis the fault of those who fail to heed it for whatever follows.]

Gwenaëlle has an invitation.

And her attendant does not, but she leaves him to attend to their horses, regardless, walking alone the last distance to Morrigan's doorstep, unconscious of the way that tension eases from her so often taut shoulders the closer that she gets. Maybe that's all it is that she comes for: because she can, because it is good to be nearer, because the world makes a little more sense when looked at from beside Morrigan. It all feels a little bit more achievable next to a woman she can hardly fathom not achieving a thing she set out to do - and to feel, for a little while, that same woman's confidence in her.

She isn't sure that the woman she sees in the mirror is the same one Morrigan sees when she looks at her - but she wants it to be. Maybe wanting it is enough of a beginning; maybe one day she will recognise her, there.

“Morrigan?” A light knock- her skirts feel heavy, the forest deep.

Edited 2017-10-01 11:25 (UTC)

A few fleeting trips when Kieran goes to lessons in the Gallows or to escort him somewhere since out here needed to be made safe enough for him (they're used to it, more than used to it, and she's glad to know he's settled again after the uprooting) and messages haven't been enough. Oh it was probably easier to talk about some things without it being face to face because that's how some things are. But Morrigan's missed her.

The door swings open into a home surprisingly warm for somewhere out in the wilds without stone walls but you learn how to pack in deep between the wood to keep out the wind and the warmth of the fire, a heavy black pot exchange for a bargain bubbling away over it. It smells not unlike her study.

"Gwenaëlle," she smiles to say it, to clap eyes on her now, "come in, sit, I have tea. There will be stew later if you wish something to eat. 'Tis not quite how my home was once but a month and more of work and I find myself satisfied." More satisfied than having to live in the Gallows amongst the rabble, the shadow of Templars, sheep, misery, red lyrium still humming somewhere to give her son nightmares. No. Give her this. Let her be a witch again.

“It's just as I might have imagined it,” she says, truthfully - for all that she knows full well how hard Morrigan has worked to have her home to her satisfaction, walking into it (coming in, sitting as she's bid) it feels entirely organic, like a living thing that's sprung up around. A natural consequence of the witch, that it should be this way. It will change, evolve, better, but for now it is right. It is right enough.

And a relief, too, because she's missed her as much. How strange it is to realise that some part of her misses Skyhold, where she had enjoyed a freedom of movement she'd never experienced in the same way - where everything and everyone seemed always somehow to hand.

Now they cluster, both more exposed and less naturally thrown together-

“I'd have brought the dirty great elf along,” after a moment, on that thought, “only this new appointment of his - you heard? - drags him back to the Gallows already. He's there now. And,” a bit more warmly, “it is lovely to have your company to myself.”

"I thought of inviting you here while I worked on it but I wanted you to see it when all the work was done," she's smiling because while Flemeth's shack was impossible to date, this is her work. Hers and the people who did help with some more practical elements but still, it's another thing that she knows how to do and shape and keep, spitting in the eye of her mother who was here once and isn't.

Swearing Kieran to secrecy is a costly thing. Somehow she's still kept a nug out of the bargain.

"Whenever both of you happen to be free, I'd hope to have you both here to celebrate that; someone who knows what he's doing in charge of something with importance." Her gaze flits to the doorway; he may need to stoop to get in, after that all should be well. "The sending crystal isn't the same for any of this, having you here as it was before. What else have I missed in my absence? Has anyone else embarrassed themselves thoroughly or caused a great scandal?"

Gwenaëlle's gaze lifts, too, briefly doing precisely the same thing: mentally comparing Thranduil's ridiculous height to the ceiling. Once he's through the door, it'll be fine.

“I don't care for him living in the Gallows, now, but under the circumstances I can't exactly begrudge it.” Not when the outpost leadership is a matter of such importance - not when she is pleased and proud that it's Thranduil taking the reins of one of the divisions. The arguments they had in the past, about his holding himself apart from the Inquisition, her refusal to acknowledge anything he did when it wasn't as an official member-

Well, it doesn't quite get more official than this. She can't complain.

Or at least not loudly or too often.

“de Fonce is back, as well, he's going to lose his mind when he finds out - if there's anything left to go. I made a gift for him, but he did not like it a bit.” Her lips quirk- “Did you ever hear, when he read that poetry on the crystals? Loathsome man, but what excellent taste in writers.” A beat. “I wrote it. 'Ilde Sauvageon' is my nom de guerre.”

(That isn't the phrase they usually use.)

“I think I could actually hear his heart breaking when he realised I was telling the truth, and all of his admiration was for, of all people, me.”

"Work is not permitted to be brought home from the Gallows," Morrigan says though that hardly stops her since so much of her work is hers after all but there's that at the very least. "Though I have no doubt that official reasons to be about the Gallows will suit."

There may not be publications but Gwenaëlle being idle about anything seems utterly ridiculous after all.

And the Gallows lot are so very loud. (Today Morrigan's in a good mood, she'll extend this rare charity towards them and the braying.)

"de Fonce-- one of the three loud ones? I'd wondered if he'd died alongside the Chantry brother and the girl." Ah yes, it comes back to her now, the exact sort of University idiots she'd watch from a distance in Orlais and wonder how if farmers knew of breeding their animals too closely that the nobility didn't know the same. (She's feeling charitable but not that charitable, perhaps on par wih a Chantry sister asking for coin in Lowtown charitable.) "I did a favour for him though I suspect he shan't follow through on his end: I went and terrified his mother on my way to Kirkwall." Either he knows of the ancient elven and gives her something useful or he learns to his peril what it is to lie to Morrigan, either way she gets her end of the bargain. Good to know she can go pester him about that for certain now.

But more pressingly: "You write poetry?" Not judging, not anything, just also looking for confirmation. Poetry for Morrigan was always an old thing in an old book that Flemeth taught her to read with. Never the sort of thing a young woman would do and she finds it hard to imagine now, sitting here across from Gwenaëlle now.

Surely having given birth to Valentine is terrifying enough-

In lieu of any of the things she might say - about the excuses she intends to find to be near the Gallows more frequently than she has, about Valentine de Fonce and the many things that are wrong with him and the likelihood that he has never followed through anything, probably, in his miserable life - Gwenaëlle answers with a recitation, closing hands around the teacup, looking at nothing in particular to recall the words:

“I think that I must be beautiful now - like this - a portrait of the artist in repose. Such use of colour - they would say - bloomed upon my cheekbone, your signet's seal in impression. I am waxen and pressed to paper, a secret folded in itself, and am I not lovely, so kept? Is there not promise in the unfolding? Unlovely in mundane fact, I must be ever as I am now - a cut glance - a murmur - the touch of fingertips. Dans le masque I am what pleases you; how ruinous, to have a heart after all.”

Pretty, but not gentle; her poetry, and her heart, besides.

The woman is afraid of moths, allegedly, what chance did she have.

Poetry is an old thing. A thing in crumbling books where the gilding had faded and the bindings had cracked. Poetry is ancient elven translated to twist upon itself until Morrigan wonders if she ever knew the meaning of it, if there was ever a meaning, if the Dalish even know what they're speaking when the language is as complex as it is with the written fragments that survive now. She's heard bards all over and bards in Orlais, heard all sorts plying their trade but again there's this.

"Gwenaëlle--" A rare thing for Morrigan to not have something ready to say but how rare it is to be surprised in the best way, to be delighted. (The magpie in her, wanting to collect bright and shining things no matter what they are, and are secret things not the most bright and shining of them all?) "How long have you written such works? Something so beautiful?"

This is Morrigan after all. Live gloriously she says when she speaks of her mother over the sending crystals, of the truth of the legend bloody as it is, real as it is, tearing your skin free and leaving bits of yourself behind. It can be beautiful because sometimes you have to find it or what are you left with?

“Since always,” with a bit of a laugh, ducking her head and looking down into her tea - if there's a bit of embarrassment, it's a gentle thing, and impossible to miss that it comes hand in hand with the giddy pleasure of sharing something that means so much to her with someone who means so much to her, and finding only approval. “I've written so long as I can remember- it's been...I suppose five years? That I've published? Under my own name I only wrote, you know, art critique and propaganda-”

the latter more recently, though it's been nearly a full year since she stopped,

“-but as Ilde Sauvageon, I've written so much poetry. It's- that's what I am.”

A poet. This is what she returns to, always, how she expresses herself, what she is most proud of.

"There have always been tales of Witches of the Wilds for as long as there have been Wilds and witches to dwell in them." Now which came first is likely to be a matter of some debate but Morrigan knows that it was Flemeth who swept her way down, into the Korcari Wilds, settled herself there to allow the legends to grow roots deeper than the gnarled trees disappearing into the swamps and bogs. "Some things--" Morrigan stops, sips her tea and starts again.

This isn't quite the same but there's this: the Game is a story too, everyone plays a part but everyone else will tell it. "Some things you might live, are they not easier when not attached to yourself?"

She isn't proud of being Flemeth's daughter. A prickling burr wormed deep in her that her fingers can't pluck out; how they tell a story as if it isn't her flesh, her blood. How they tell stories too of Gwenaëlle and people like her as if the same isn't true for her also.

“It's the opposite, almost,” she says, slowly, slow in the way of a young woman who has known words all her life finally putting them to something long unexamined, resented and pressed at but never discussed. Never addressed. Never looked at, long and hard, and known for what it is.

It takes her a moment to order her thoughts.

“Everything that's attached to me,” she says, finally, “is someone else's. I told de Fonce the poems were mine because the reason I didn't claim them before wasn't mine. And I've been coming to think I should be a bit more considered, henceforth, about doing things for other people's reasons.”

Live gloriously. She fucking well will.

Edited 2017-10-12 11:42 (UTC)

A girl wandered into Morrigan's study when she came to Skyhold, that girl that revealed herself to be a young woman, a treasured friend and so dear, now after everything, now they're here Morrigan hears what she's wanted to hear. Not that she's ever been disappointed when she knows things take time (how could she not, she lived a life of making that discovery after all) but here she sits. There you are, Morrigan almost says but doesn't, allows her smile over the lip of her cup to say it for her.

"We live different lives, I remind them all of Flemeth's legends when they would ignore the inconvenient truths, shape her from something that isn't blood not wholly her own but you are right. This is your life, after all, to live on your terms," as much as that's ever possible but does she do it now, does she take those steps Morrigan believes so. "Poetry is remembered for as long as all other things. Longer, I would think. 'Tis a record. Claim it, make sure they know who it belonged to."

Legacy, after all, isn't a beast you get to choose all of so best start fashioning as much as you can while you have the breath in you to do it.

“I wish there was more of a middle-ground in the meanwhile.”

Hiding away in someone else's shadow or stepping forthrightly into the light of acknowledgment for herself- if there could perhaps be some assurance that claiming her own legacy could be done quietly, on her own time, without so much scrutiny. If she could assert herself and have it be of no moment to anybody else whatsoever...

And she's not such a bright light that nothing will ever outshine her, she doesn't imagine whatever attention she might draw will be so persistent as all that, that she could never quietly have her affairs her own without somehow being forced to do it in a withdrawal, but.

The secrets of her parents have instilled fear of that scrutiny down to her bones, it's true, but there's a part of her that would have chafed at it regardless, that wants to wriggle free of confines and do as she pleases and wishes she were someone who could do it without somehow becoming someone whose business other people care to notice in the first place.

“I'd quite like to be remembered as poets usually are,” with a glint of humor that doesn't belie the truth of the assertion, “posthumously. I hate to be bothered.”

"Thedas does not have a good history with that. You are my enemy or not, seldom my friend. You are either side of the river, either side of the blade."

That first foray out into the world in truth taught her that well enough when there was certainly so much grey but how many of them even see it? Certainly for now so much red it makes it all the more difficult but come a war and even now the old battlelines are drawn ever as they try to move forward.

Your grief must come later, in the dark shadows before you take vengeance. Flemeth had told her that once but it hadn't been a thing she could say to someone with grief raw and wet before her, still it comes to her because when is there not some grief for all the things that cannot be? That cannot be had, cannot be said, must be set aside for the now, the future that might be if you plan well enough for it--

Perhaps that is vengenace then, deciding to take what is yours and take it. To be what you wish to be.

"You shall find yourself a great deal more troubled making your face more seen about the Gallows, for Thranduil has never struck me as one to sit idle, and Ser Coupe is not a Templar to merely occupy a space while she takes up her ration of lyrium spouting empty verse." Kieran chatters, as any boy chatters (well no, not quite) but beyond that more speaks to involvement and bothering, not all of it on the part of the one doing the bothering.

Gwenaëlle's expression has pulled into a moue of displeasure before Morrigan is even finished her sentence on the matter of what Ser Coupe is and is not-

“I truly detest that woman,” with a sigh.

Not disagreement; the assessment is a fair one, and she doesn't doubt that that woman will stick her unwelcome oar in wherever she bloody well pleases if given further opportunities to do so (as if it isn't bad enough that she comes and goes from Gwenaëlle's own home, sees fit to question her as if she's any right to hear answers). She resents the truth of it, that inexplicable and unasked for presence in her life. The judgment she perceives, as if anyone even cares what she thinks, as if it matters, as if she's any right.

What business is it of hers? She's made it so, that's apparent, but to what end?

She doesn't know, and so: she never allows herself to forget that she doesn't know, and does not trust her.

Edited 2017-10-16 08:22 (UTC)

"When one is a mage, and given the rest of them, 'tis best to have someone that inspires feeling. She tells tales more interesting than I thought a Templar would have the mind left for."

Spare her Norrington, as useless as they come from what she recalls of their meeting.

And there's the other matter as she pours fresh tea, bites into a small hearthcake she'd been taught to make from leftovers still as good as it was then. "You no longer take lessons with her then?"

Not everything is something she can know when her eluvian is in Skyhold and the keeping of Merrill's entrusted to her as well, being as she is the one who knows most of them. It had pleased her and she'd made no secret of it, words and blade, armed no matter what might come for her with increasing likelihood now. Rifters and elves are not well-loved, to be both at once, to rise so high so fast in Kirkwall amongst those already chosen?

Thranduil at the Gallows but anyone who thinks the Gallows is safe is a damned fool throwing themselves willingly into the fire.

"I wish," she says, perhaps more frankly than she'd meant when she had so carefully concealed this particular weakness from Morrigan's eye- it's easier, now it's not so new and sharp a sting. Honest as better suits her, she says, "I was never doing it by choice. If an accident happened to befall her,"

she sips her tea,

"It couldn't happen to a more unpleasant woman. I can't wait for the day she gets bored of whatever inexplicable reasons she has for being so incapable of staying the fuck out of my business."

Well.

She looks like she feels better for having said it.

"We are in Kirkwall. Not one of us are welcomed here, not even Templars after the great debacle." What do they even call it, everything that kickstarted the war here, the clumsiness, the mishandlings, the ignorance, so many eyes and hands that no matter if people were personally involved they're all still given a portion of the shared blame for it. Had it been any other Templar coming to her about the forest appearing overnight though, she wouldn't have been so willing to aid.

You don't ever give your trust to a Templar, that's falling upon their blade for them, taking it out of the damned sheathe too yet compared to others trying to handle certain messes in the past that she's watched from the sidelines, it seemed one that might not end badly for everyone involved. Not jumping to conclusions. Not reactionary shrieking from all sides. (Fade-training, Harrowings by any other name, so willing to show just where the weak points were.)

I've missed these talks, Morrigan's smile says, the days of venting her own bile of Vivienne, the little Circle back in Skyhold, the good it did her to be able to say all of that. "Yet she persists." Not a question but not wholly a statement. Alistair was for the assistance of how to use her hand but not blades, and Templars born of a family such as Wren's-- well she's never had reason to believe that the Vauquelins were particularly devout no matter how the Game was played.

The momentary satisfaction is--

momentary, and then she remembers why she hadn't said it before. The smile that mirrors Morrigan's doesn't, really; it mirrors the first smile that Gwenaëlle had pressed her mouth into, the first day they met, fixed and false. A thin gloss over something swiftly withdrawn.

“Yes,” she says, in answer to that prompt, some desperate loneliness opening up underneath it. And a surge of furious resentment: that even this, somehow, Luwenna Coupe can touch and in doing so taint. The tea is warm and the place is right and she's missed Morrigan so much and even this isn't safe, isn't hers. There is nothing that woman isn't bound and determined to ruin for her.

She stares down into the teacup and finds she has no stomach for it, any more. She says, “I'd prefer not to speak of her.” Now.

Ever.

What volumes it speaks that Morrigan doesn't press.

Alistair she might if she thought it was for his own good or could say it was for Kieran, others she does because why should she care for their feelings when there's work to be done, when there are few who would ever, have ever cared for hers.

(How she survived the Game, comes again, unbidden. Morrigan had a smirk. Maybe that's the difference between civilised and not.)

"I understand." As much as she can so in the only thing she can think of that might change things- "How long has some fade-touched pony lived in your garden? Kieran kept remarkably silent."

[When matters in Kirkwall don't require her attention, there's Sundermount to explore again. Mountain passes to traverse though they aren't without their dangers as she makes to gather ingredients or takes note of whatever there is to be found since coming back from the Wilds.

Sundermount has a long history. A storied history. A history steeped in blood and legends same as the Wilds she left behind. Spectral creatures rise from the shadows higher on the passes one day, spiders the next, skeletons in cave after cave after.

The higher the climb, the more vicious the creature but the final destination is the same with the shaman's words ringing in her ears long after the last of the figures is slain: scales and Mythal and this altar to her where her mother appeared again if a book is to be believed.

Quiet up here with the wind in her hair though. No birds but her should she choose to take flight.]

[Although he doesn't live on Sundermount itself, his place out here in the Vimmarks isn't very far from that towering mountain. Which is why he finds himself venturing there pretty often. After all, there are said to be many Grey Warden related structures and items to be found out there. So whenever Kain has no other pressing business, he goes exploring.]

[At the moment he's high up on the mountain, somewhere not too far from the shrine's location, in the midst of fighting a bunch of skeletons. The sound of his sword striking their bones is probably unmistakable as he defends himself against them. There's no end to the creepy things up here, is there?]

[Emerging from round one corner where a landslide crushed everything in its path to reshape the pass from whatever it was before, however long ago it might have been, Morrigan hears metal striking bone, the whistling rattle of wind passing through all the hollows of bodies with more magic than even sinew and gristle to hold themselves together.

Ice slows many things, her staff raised to fire out a spell before she pauses to see if she recognises the figure. Not that it matters, the undead must be dealt with time and time again as they rise.]

One wonders [she keeps her distance; spells work best this way] how many dead Sundermount has known.

[Whereas Kain has to get right up in the midst of the fray, all the better to use his reaver-skills to their fullest potential. Though he has to admit he's grateful for some help right now. A couple of undead are easy to mow down, but they have considerable strength in numbers like this.]

Far too many, it would seem- [Kain pauses to whirl around, using his favored two-handed whirlwind technique to slam his sword into as far as reach as he can. Bones clatter as they're smashed apart, although some of these undead keep going despite limbs being severed.] -apparently things are a little too crowded for them to just- stay in the ground!

[He keeps the onslaught going, hitting them hard, one after another.]

[Hand outstretched to cast again, something pushing itself from the ground clutches at her ankle forcing her to kick free of the grip then hit it the rest of the way--]

They are old. [Has she not spoken of Sundermount's history before? Hard to recall in the thick of it.] A place of war, the Veil so thin already that more death heaped upon it that the ancient elvhen need not have bothered--

[Walking bomb when it comes to the undead isn't a pleasant thing but she allows the body to rise, to come close before spinning the staff to block the limbs from attacking as she lays her hand flat upon it. The spell burns through her palm as it ever does into withered flesh before she shoves it in his direction to shamble to the nearest target, gathering her mana again but it's a potent spell. How long should it take before there's a blood explosion?

(Mind the splash damage.)]

Ah, yes... death and veil thinness... my favorite things.

[He says this with plenty of sarcasm, not entirely thrilled to end up in such a situation. But he should have seen it coming. The mountain has so many tales told about it, after all... things which he's now starting to see firsthand. Well, it could always be worse.]

[Kain keeps on with the physical attack, feeling satisfied every time he hears bones cracking from the force of his sword. He sees Morrigan casting something, and watches the one she'd targeted closely. The explosion happens all of a sudden as the infected skeleton falls, and Kain braces himself. The closest undead end up pretty well splattered, making disturbing noises as the toxic blood hits them. Kain gets hit with some as well, but this only adds to his strength. He's got Ring of Pain in effect, but also the more enemies that fall, the more power he has too. He's ready for this.]

[Feeling bolstered, Kain slams his sword downward. The shattered ground trembles below the skeletal figures, flames erupting to add to the damage.]

[So a Reaver then.

Morrigan's seen Reavers fight in the past, more of them on the opposite side to her own. Never pleasant to fight a person who revelled in it that way but he's over there doing his thing as she keeps a careful distance from him because they can be so unpredictable.

Anyone who's drunk of dragon's blood has that in them.

(To meet one here-- No, there's the fight, she can think of it after.)

Greeting the flames with bursts of lightning she sends more corpses reeling from her, stumbling away with none to replace them this time. Yet she knows that should she walk this path again they'll rise. They'll always rise. There will be no peace of the grave eternal for any who slumber here.]

Archer! [Morrigan calls while she summons her will to cast again but arrows require none of that, certainly not from the dead, withered fingers pulling taut the string of an ancient bow as the arrow takes flight.]

[Kain has always hated the undead, or more accurately, what they're forced to be. One of his worst nightmares is being trapped as a shambling, unthinking corpse, forced to fight the living, or do the bidding of someone more powerful. It's unsettling, and the sooner these are put down, the better. Though even he has to wonder just how many of them will truly be put down for good here.]

[Fire and lightning are doing their work on some of those corpses, burning and reducing them to ashes. Their numbers are going down now, which is a good sign. Kain's sword slices the head cleanly off another one, the body collapsing but still squirming until Kain cuts through it with a heavy stab. He's just pulling that sword free as Morrigan calls out. The arrow just barely misses him, soaring by overhead, only because he'd moved quickly at the shouted warning. But there's more coming after that one. Kain sets his sights on on that archer now, as that skeletal bow fires off another arrow. Heedless of getting fired at, Kain charges in. He figures if he gets hit, he'll just use that against the creature... But another undead shambles in to block his path first, striking Kain with a surprise attack. He slams his sword into the corpse, cutting through its rotting flesh.]

[After Darkspawn, most horrors are things Morrigan is immune to by now, only a sliding scale of how much she detests the smell, the sound, the difficulty to clean away the remains that might cling to her. There are worse horrors in the minds of the living than the things living. (A cage, ever a cage, to not be what she is, what she wishes to; what thing in all the world is worse than that?)

The Deep Roads, her mind whispers through the wind blowing over the mountaintop, through the gaps in the funeral piles, in the gasping of the dead risen again, you remember Hespith's rhyme same as you remember the press of the tunnels, the rankness of the thing's breath.

Another shambles - like Redcliffe, how they kept coming but not so many for there are only so many graves picked out here - and she strikes hard with the staff to send it back. Summons her mana for a stronger spell. Something to twist whatever mind or instinct or will is left to the undead as Kain moves, perhaps something to help; hand outstretched, the caustic bite of entropy beneath her skin that always seems to nip and burn at the skin, wishing to peel away the flesh same as acid does. Disorientation falls over the shamblers. They raise their weapons and-- why do their hands hold weapons? What is their purpose? Why--

They do not get out of his way. They do not strike when they should. Morrigan takes a blow across the arm when one stumbles forward, tastes the bite of cold steel still sharp beneath the rust. She grits her teeth.]

[Outside of the door in the Gallows that like a door in Skyhold has a sturdy lock and a careful selection of spells placed upon it, there's the library in the Gallows. Setting foot within the Gallows reminds her of all that she isn't, will never be, what the world whispers of her (what does Orlais say now, what tone do the gossips take when discussing the scandalous apostate walking around the Gallows) and she misses Skyhold.

How many times she's said she misses it but the more days she comes and goes to hunt down any shred of truth or meaning in what she was told, peeling back layer after layer of whatever fragment of old Tevinter or the ancient elves or anything from long ago that she might find without the cacophony of Leliana's ravens echoing down from the rookery above only makes it more so.

And yet she returns as often as time permits, takes up a whole time as the tallow candles burn low with notes and maps spread out across the table, perilous stacks in her arms or piled beside her. Somewhere Flemeth is laughing and each time she thinks it, her face pulls tight and she looks over her shoulder as if expecting to find her standing there in the doorway with her cruellest smile and a word to cut her down.]

The library's a strange place for a blind man to do so much of his research, but there's something about the place--something about not being mured up alone (out of sight, out of mind) in his quarters--that's a comfort to Myr. Creation's a school innocuous enough (in most respects) that he can take his spellwork anywhere; why not the library where the small noises of the archivists about the stacks and other researchers at their reading provide balm to a lonely heart?

So of evenings--his evenings, the last few hours of his twenty-five hour day, lately landing near midafternoon--he takes his less-volatile work with him to a table in a disused corner and settles in to work. Today it's not magic that occupies him--beyond a single shining glyph on the wood at his elbow--but knots. Circle mages aren't sailors but he has a mess of thin cordage, and determination, and an idea, which should suffice--shouldn't it?--where formal training is lacking. Except he's quick to come up against the bounds of his own knowledge; a half-remembered pamphlet on wilderness survival isn't much to go on when it comes to working out a set of unique knots.

At length he elects to give his cramping fingers and strained memory a rest, getting up from the table to pace the perimeter of the library and stretch his legs. Ordinarily he'd keep to the parts he knows are largely unoccupied, haven't changed since last he'd walked through them, but he's distracted by too many cares of late and takes a wrong turn through the stacks--

And runs into Morrigan's table, a tidy hip-check that has him swearing and thrusting out a hand to (fortuitously) steady a destabilizing pile of books. "--shit! Sorry--got on the wrong side of the library--" Hastily tucking his staff against his shoulder he adds the second hand to the effort as one of the topmost of the stack starts to slide, balancing things as best he can.

Raise a child and a certain level of reflexes are required. Raise a child where sometimes you look upon him wondering, what did I do, is it enough that I love you and am I her, will I be her, if I run hard and fast enough will I outpace the shadow then you become very good at being ready for a thing when it comes. Even when least expected. A scroll of parchment curls upon itself and skitters off the top of the stack, rolling beneath the table and to a stop under Morrigan's boot when she stands to help catch the rest of it, mouth open to snap until--

There are things Morrigan would have said ten years ago. There are things Morrigan doesn't say now.

"Nothing broken, these are far from the rarest volumes," she replies and slides some over onto the table since they're going to topple and the only way to do this is to ease it. "You have the layout memorised then? Did you hail from here before the world ignited in flames?" A more poetic way to put it unless you come from Halamshiral where it did but this is a mage she's speaking with, the staff gives it away as much as the lack of an Orlesian accent.

He draws his hands back--cautious, careful lest that be the trigger for an avalanche--when he feels her removing the imperiled books from the pile. "Maker be thanked." His tone's wry and abashed alike; she didn't snap but he'll blame himself all the same for his inattentive clumsiness. "I was afraid I'd give the archivists the idea everyone from Hasmal's a book-destroying oaf."

Which isn't a fair characterization of his cousin--as Vandelin's quick to point out, he had help--but when it came to an elven mage and a templar jointly toppling a shelf, it's a safe bet who'd take the lion's share of the blame.

"Mostly memorized. And no, I'm glad to say not--" For all his love of his Circle and the Chantry there's no denying, no downplaying the horror of the Gallows; he won't pretend he'd be who he was if he'd been shackled and abused here. "--only I'm very good at learning places fast. Have to be."

He pauses a beat, face tilted toward her as he puzzles over her voice. "I've heard you before," he says at last, "but I don't know your name." And he's only tentative as that because what he did remember her speaking of left him with a faint feeling of dread.

"Do you care so greatly for the opinions of those who spend much of their lives organising volumes about Divines and the blinkered notions of Chantry scholars between deciding what tomes should be removed from the view?" An uncharitable view perhaps when it comes to the duties of archivists but when so many of the books Morrigan's ever needed have had to come from elsewhere, sometimes private collections from Celene's hand at times or through her own methods well she's allowed. "I have seen worse, fools carrying stacks taller than their heads through Skyhold where the railings from one level to the next were only waist high and 'twas easy to walk to the stairs."

A long fall either way and likely to have been equally painful and equally deserved for displays such as that but sometimes the child must learn that the stove is hot when they've got their throbbing hand in cold water.

So not in Kirkwall that he came by this but sometimes all it takes is one misplaced spell, something to deflect or strike the wrong way and it goes terribly wrong. Circle mages might learn a great many things but were they ever prepared for the cost of war, she wonders? "Many would envy you that, though likely not enough to come by it."

Heard you, he says. Not heard of as so many have but that might change. "You may call me Morrigan, though I cannot say I know yours." An invitation, if he will. Sending crystal dramatics and revelations with Gwenaelle and Thranduil aside, Sundermount and the clues the shaman left her with have occupied all her time since returning from the Wilds, she's paid little attention to her sending crystal until now.

The question hauls Myr up short, more for the content than the sentiment of it. Uncharitable, yes--but hardly the first time he's heard that particular brand of uncharity. (Or given voice to something near it, when the Hasmal archivists had hidden something he needed.) But did he care? "No," he replies wryly, "only it isn't true and I'd not be banned from the library for a falsehood. Better to earn it by breaking my neck along with a few spines like the fools in Skyhold."

Though he's got to smile--rueful-fond--at her description; keeping a stack of books manageable is a lesson he learned the hard way--Maker be thanked the flight of stairs involved was short.

Many would envy you that, she says, and his smile's suddenly thinner and less fond. A kind of sideways praise, isn't it? But hard to be gracious about when the wound's still raw, and he can very well imagine precisely what she describes. "Need's a good teacher, but I'd be as glad no one else had to learn her lessons."

From the look of surprise on his face--wide-eyed, from anyone else--he does recognize that name. "You're the witch." A loyal son of the Chantry ought not to have anything to do with her; but Myr's curiosity often leads him places he ought not (and blessedly they weren't so good at beating curiosity out of Hasmal's mages). Confronted with the woman herself, the curiosity quickly wins. "All the stories they've told about you--are they true?"

It only then dawns on him she's asked his name. "Ah--and forgive my manners; I'm Myrobalan." He'd already said he was from Hasmal and the robes give him away as a Circle mage. A little less formality seems in order.

Edited 2017-10-09 03:57 (UTC)

"Say a thing too eagerly and someone might hurry along to see it done, what comes is called." Things are lingering with her now (as if they haven't always settled somewhere to be picked at later when there's time) but given where they are and all the great difficulties - though knowing what she knows in her long tenure with the Inquisition, the general degree of making much noise about a thing in the doing of it how much of it was as bad as it was she'll never know - it's surprising. Still, so long outside the Circles and it's likely that they're going feral by Chantry standards.

She watches his face, watches it change, sighs the way she does sometimes with a lesson she didn't think she'd have to explain; that's what happens when you live life by a different set of rules. "Survival has meaning." How many dead stretch out between them, between all the roads taken to Kirkwall, to Skyhold, all the roads she walked in the Blight and after, all the long years his Circle ever stood? How many dead and him blind yet among the living. Walking the halls of the library. "There are those who would underestimate one who cannot see, same as there are men who make assumptions about women. The world turns on, digs itself deeper and deeper as the Ages wear upon it but 'tis ever the same. A few details change, it struggles, thrashes, the fly in the spider's web...and here we are again."

The witch. How gratifying to be recognised with the curling smile of satisfaction Myr misses but her voice is pleased. "I am indeed. Witch of the Wilds and now, one supposes, of Sundermount it being the wildest of places close to Kirkwall. What stories have they told of me Myrobalan? That I am daughter of Flemeth from the legends? That I fought at the side of the Hero of Ferelden in the Fifth Blight? That I am a maleficar poisoning the mind of the empress?" All of them are told sometimes from the same mouth as if she can't possibly be all three of those people and more. "Or that I am dangerous. Chasind. An abomination and apostate to be made-- well whatever they would make of such a thing."

"Survival has meaning." His frown deepens at the rebuke, fingers tightening on his staff; the words jar uncomfortably against memory, strike sparks-- You're lucky to be alive, they'd said, when so many others weren't. Lucky the rebels hadn't done anything more fatal. Lucky to have avoided wound rot and blood poisoning after the spirit healer chose for him to finish the job he'd started.

A mage lacking in control is a danger to himself and others. He'd survived in spite of his own best efforts, not because of them, and to be reminded of that always stings. Yet-- "It does," he admits, swallowing the frown and his own wounded stupid pride alike. "Even if only I've something yet to do here." What that is remains to be seen, but her talk of ages and the grinding circular progress of the world neatly frames just how small that particular struggle is. You're nothing new beneath the sun, it says, and that's something to take odd comfort in.

What other kind of advice might one expect from a witch, though? The Circles make much of the Chantry's overthrow of the old traditions and how theirs is the better pursuit of magic--scholarly, contained, tame--but there isn't any denying that many apostates have much deeper roots than the epithet "hedge mage" implies. It all gives him the same uneasy feeling that talking to his Dalish cousins does--the creeping sense he's come in contact with something much older and wilder than anything he's known, something with reason to think him very small and unimpressive. "All of those--and that you're a shapeshifter, besides.

"And they'd call you another victim of arcanist derangement to be brought safely to a Circle." It's the orthodox line but even as he says it he finds himself wondering at it. Did Flemeth's daughter need safety? Did a woman who fought through the Fifth Blight require templars hedging her around at all hours while her magic was tamed? "But you aren't really warping the empress' mind, are you?"

It's an artless, credulous question that he kicks himself for even after he's said it. Of course she wouldn't answer that truthfully if she were.

How long the Inquisition or parts of it have sat without direction. The Mage Council was a mistake, and she hopes it not to be one repeated again, wasted effort and bickering when there are more important matters, minds, bodies, voices better occupied with true concerns rather than how some of them dearly wish to pen themselves back in or bow to a Templar, have one hold their hand and rebuke them when they stumble over the Chant. "There is always struggle," Morrigan continues, unperturbed by his reaction to her words (she's said worse with less), "but understand. Without understanding, much is destroyed and lost. What have we already sacrificed to ignorance willfully or not?"

An old refrain but if he has the mind to listen to what she's saying then he might gain a lesson from it for this is how her lessons come. Circle mages and she have never had the easiest time of it, she spends more time about the rifters, the Dalish, a Warden here or there, mages who exist away from the rules of Circles or from those not quite like the rest. It might be too late. He might be too tied to his Chantry ways as so many of them are, lashed to a wheel that turns tighter ever tighter and must one day be abruptly broken harder than it has now if so many still clamour for what they had. "Ah, the magic the Chantry would have turned but to tales told by the hearth to frighten a child, to superstition and legend. What would they do, I wonder, if they knew the truth of it? They cannot imagine a world outside of their own little rules, to imagine flight--

"Safety? In a Circle?" Abruptly she changes the topic, so surprised at the very idea of it that she doesn't know what to make of it. The laugh is in the back of her throat, echoes in her first words. A witch's laugh. A woman who knows where the lines and borders of the unseen world are to neatly bend them, twist them, navigate them. "When I was taught as a girl - by Flemeth no less - there were no abominations. Yet Kinloch Hold was rife with them, books on blood magic removed from shelves, blood mages hidden within. Circle after Circle has the same tales: there is a child taught to fear, there is a child never taught the strength they must have. Then comes the demon to pick up their trail as the wolf prowls through forest, field, and fen." I have known the world as a wolf, I know that the wolf will find the fawn even as it lies so still in the grass, heart thumping wildly. "The Circle would teach me nothing. The Circle would seek to make me less. I do not live for the comfort of another creature."

The feathers of her robes rustle, the stones and beads of necklaces and fasteners clatter gently as she leans forward. Do you hear the smile, Myr? "Do blood mages commonly quarrel with those whose minds they hold sway over?" Tell her the opinions and learnings of a Circle mage on the subject, it'll be a refreshing change from Orlesian courtiers attempting to sound enlightened third or fourth hand from some mage relative locked away or from whatever they tried to pick up from Vivienne and heard in passing years ago.

Listening to what's said to him--and hearing what's behind it--is one lesson Myr's learned well from all life has to teach. Even if--especially if--it meant listening to things that don't fit so cleanly into the worldview the Chantry would instill in its mages. His own curiosity by itself would demand as much--let alone the belief that faith left in ignorant darkness is a weak and pale sprout indeed. Without understanding, much is destroyed and lost, she says, and he inclines his head in mute agreement. Just so; while there's much he'll defend the Chantry on, the hierarchy's difficult relationship with "forbidden" knowledge is not among it. Suppressing difficult questions doesn't rid the world of them.

Neither does his willingness to entertain them bind him to the answers others have found. He'd love dearly to pursue the idea of flight, but-- "What would you have us learn instead? We aren't all born to mothers as fierce as yours; we can't all live wholly for our own satisfaction. The magisters of the Imperium don't learn fear, but it's awash in blood magic all the same." While the words are combative, his tone isn't; something will have to be done with them, with him, in the years to come--should Corypheus be defeated, should they have years yet--and no one could argue in good faith the Circles were perfect as they were. If improving the lot for mages under the Chantry meant listening to those outside it--

There's a rattle of movement--and though he goes briefly silent he stands his ground as she leans in, head canted a little to one side at the question she asks. (How is it he's made a habit of encountering the most unnerving folk the Inquisition's got to offer in the library? At least the sense of unease Morrigan brings with her is clean and easily run to its source; she's a warm-blooded predator to the magister's snake.) "It's not the story they tell of blood mages," he replies at length. "Where they surround themselves with mindless puppets. But 'mindless' is a strange look for an empress who's won a civil war and fought off her own cousin--so I'd think a maleficar who wanted to go unnoticed wouldn't be so blatant about it."

A ghost of his usual smile graces the words. "Though if you're damned to suspicion either way by being a mage in a place of influence, what's the point in hiding?"

Fear is a cage. Fear is a cage which poses a question of two parts: whose stupidity is greater, those who built the cage in the first place or those who allow themselves to be put in it. What things have been done because fear has whispered. I am afraid of the invaders at the border, a general might say as he rallies an army, as those on the other side interpret it aggression, so it feeds itself. Ravenous as hunger has any right to be. If I had to pay all those elves a fair wage, if I had to treat them as a person, the Orlesian noble might think going over the accounts before refusing to pay for services rendered. Rage burns hot and bright, the hollow spaces of hunger. People who do not understand anything because they fear it. History repeats itself. Pity the Chantry is so slow on the uptake.

"Fierce? Is that how the tale of Flemeth sounds these days?" Fierce is-- To a Circle mage perhaps but fierce implies something with less awareness or believing itself to have more valour; Flemeth possesses too much of the former, and any accusing her of carrying about the latter are those casting themselves into the maw of the dragon as it inhales to bathe them in flame. "Neither were any of you born to ewes or rams. What a mage does is what no other does. Revel in what you can do. Do not let them take that from you; how much of these schools of magic do you think come from the Chantry, from those who have never cast a spell in their life. How much do you understand of what is you?" Posing more questions than answers might not seem fair to others but this is how Morrigan speaks more often than not, tips her head to the side, prods and pokes until she finds something. This isn't talking to Anders where it's all combat. Or the others, older, set in their ways. "Ah, the wicked men of Tevinter - if you believe all the drivel the Chantry teaches then why stand here now? Tevinter was what it was. Is what it is now. Do you believe every teaching they have every told of the world? The elves were older. If magic runs through your veins, through whole lineages...is not all magic blood magic?"

How very scandalous an idea and yet--

And yet how little is it understood. Is the fear of a mage in a line passed in whispers. To be cut out root and stem. To bring in less magic not more for those who do not value it. All of it depends on where one sits.

(There are places where the boundaries of things are less than they should be. One need not disturb the Veil to go seek them out. Libraries, Morrigan's found, have ever been such liminal spaces where something always seems just that slight touch off.) "Maleficar. Arcane advisor. Scornful sorceress. Apostate. Name me witch but that might've frightened all of them too much." Name a thing what it is, you admit that it's real. The lad hasn't run though, she has to commend him for that so it's a careful touch on the arm, to tap the table, a quiet murmur of sit. (She has a son, he likes to go exploring Kirkwall when she's here proper.) "There are mindless creatures in the world enough without turning to blood magic, those without wit or sense, or those who chose not to think." There are other sorts of abominations that walk around as humans, elves, dwarves, grey folk all of their days, no one batting an eye.

She laughs, louder, pleased. "I did not do as Vivienne did. I never sought to play their games, court favours. No masks, no pale gowns. I am myself entirely. 'Tis a valuable thing." A rare thing. A thing almost stolen.

"What would you say of her instead?" There's an earnestness behind Myr's tone as he asks the question that goes beyond a hunger to hear legends; this is Flemeth's daughter, who knows the truth at the heart of the stories, the real being shrouded 'round in fearful whispers. What does Asha'bellanar's child think of her, he wonders, inclined as he is to think of people in kinships--of blood, of affinity, of faith. Context matters; society matters, even such thread-thin society as ancient witches among a far-flung people might keep. There's a pattern to everything--and that's the thought that brings a twitch of a smile to his face at the mention of sheep. No, Iolan Shivana had been no sheep; willful obedience was something different than herd-instinct meekness--and the shems had sensed it in the end and killed him for it. "I understand enough to know it isn't very much," he admits, smile widening to something rueful, truthful. Not quite self-deprecating. "And that not all there is to learn's kept neatly in a Circle library. But--"

There are things he goes too far on, he knows. As she said--if he believed all the Chantry taught he wouldn't be here; ergo, he must not. And he likes to think (in what he knows is the pride of his own heart) that those things he doesn't believe aren't the core of the faith, aren't what the Maker had intended His second children to cling to. The trappings of fearful men, rather than the command of the divine--but those commands, oh, how little he will budge on them. "Tevinter was built on the backs of slaves and magic that eats lives; whatever else it was or is or will be, that is a stain on the world." The elves were older, and well, so, the Imperium had trampled over them too--

"Is not all magic blood magic?" The challenge draws him up short with a noise almost like a surprised laugh; he's been scandalized, maybe, right into disbelieving humor. "If you put it that way, but so long as the blood remains safely in my veins, I don't know anyone will think of what I'm doing as blood magic. And that's how I'd keep it, so I've got the chance for a lineage myself." Idly said, without conviction; he knows it's a possibility but the thoughts of mate and family and children are dug out of them so effectively in the Circles. They're for other people, not mages; a mage is a creature set apart.

He starts at the touch--not afraid, not exactly, but wound tight enough from the careful nervy business of speaking to her that it comes as a surprise. Yet, he takes the invitation, finding the nearest chair and seating himself at her table. (Don't think so much of what sitting down with a witch might mean for the state of one's soul. At least they aren't sharing bread and salt, no binding guest-right, only talk. Interesting talk.) "Then what took you to Orlais, where so many of them congregate?"

Where she'd stand out defiantly among the masks, and what thing that is-- How much are you yourself, Myrobalan? And how much what's been made of you? Questions he's ducked aside from before because staring them in the face meant changing. But the presence of a witch changes things; the outward pecking of the raven's beak so much like the inward gnawing of his own thoughts that he can't avoid them--but embrace the discomfort, here, and give it room to run.

"Were I to jest I would sometimes say she is a nutty old bat, it pleases her at times, to seem that way. But long have I believed she is something far worse than most would have her believe. Someone who appears when need is great. When the hero embarks upon their journey but alas, 'twould seem all is lost yet there is old Flemeth appearing as she will. Lost in the wilds until they find her hut," Maric, the rebel prince with Loghain who would be the traitor teyrn above all other accomplishments, "or alone in a tower so near death then down she swoops," the Hero and Alistair in Ishal, "or perhaps as a dragon to burn the Darkspawn back." The Champion, her family, her friend. What remained at any rate. Fate, she whispers, change, how she twists upon herself as she did in the old tales. Vengeance though, the shadow slipped under her tongue for was there not vengeance in each of those tales? Was there not justice to go with them? Again she wonders who her mother is. What her mother is. Why she turns over the horn and the wand to see a dragon more and more as time wears on. "Mother of Vengeance to the Chasind who learned their magic from Witches of the Wild. If you read the tale of Flemeth or heard it, 'tis not as my mother told it to me. Books and bedtimes tales do not remember things as those who lived it."

Sage enough advice from one who lived through the Fifth Blight to hear parts of her own life repeated back at her as if she were not there to live it, for any of them living in the here and now who might make it through to see their own parts in this recorded in some way. Who will turn to someone and say no, that isn't how it was, listen close but how the world fancies a simpler neater telling or wild embellishmet and fancy. Not a complicated truth. Never that. It doesn't sit easily in the stomach.

Sometimes Morrigan thinks of Tevinter. If influence extended further. Thinks of what lies buried in vaults, or upon shelves, in studies, in libraries, all the many books, the knowledge-- "Yet how much did they come by from those ancient elves? Can you imagine the wonders they once saw before they sank it, ground it to dust? The elves left no roads yet perhaps they did by way of Tevinter." Thedas is built upon those roads, blood and bone, all of it churning wetly, blackly, beneath them. As if anyone has walked somewhere some soul wasn't bled or forced forwards in the name of expansion.

"The Circle and the Chantry know nothing of magic. Their distinctions comfort only them - do you know what shapeshifting is? There are many who would tell you a great many things including that such things are impossible, a thing to be stamped out, or that 'tis a matter of changing only the shape." Another rustle, the smell of wet damp earth that clings to her robes even all these years later stronger when she does. "You copy the soul. My mother taught me. How much did you learn of blood magic from the Circle telling you 'twas forbidden?"

Ah. Orlais. Well she owes less loyalty to Celene these days than she ever did, a partnership borne out of mutual necessity over anything else and if anything at all is clear from the conversation on her end - how interesting this young man is, how very rare to find these Circle mages appearing even now to speak so undaunted but so well, refreshing to be in the presence of someone who doesn't just bray and wonder why she scorns them - then it's that it's ever been a fraught thing. "'Twas the last place a person might look for me," she says simply for sometimes there is a truth, and the truth is simple. "And each of us had a thing the other wished for. Celene had a fascination with arcane knowledge no Circle mage could provide her with, I happened to be that mage."

[There is Kirkwall.

There is Kirkwall and it is a riot; when the Blight raged and she helped to fight it, people fled here to this mess of a city, and while she raised her son between worlds and then on the move and in Orlais it near tore itself apart. The stitches are ugly. The stitches barely hold themselves together.

But there's more to see in Kirkwall now that she doesn't have to live in it proper, and a market to explore, and Kieran who wants to explore it. So there she is. Sneer in place when a person comes too close. (To think of how many places she'd take over this. Even rotting. At least the rot she remembers then was a good and honest one.)]

I was so sure she was mad, [ Alistair is saying at her side, in medias res.

He's also watching Kieran, where he's wandering shop stalls, with idle affection rather than any excess of concern. It's a quiet day. No part of the city is on fire. He's getting terribly tall.

Alistair is talking about Flemeth, though, and glancing down periodically to touch something for sale, in a fidgety way, not particularly interested in buying anything so much as curious, in general. If he were in uniform he wouldn't touch anything—wouldn't make the merchants wonder if they were about to lose their goods to the Cause—but he's not. He's blending in very well. Kirkwall is a bigger city than he's ever spent any significant time in. He's not a twenty year old country boy anymore, but he is a thirty-something Warden who's done his world traveling primarily underground, where there aren't any market stalls, and the city it hasn't lost its shine yet. ]

Batty old witches scooping us out of towers—it's sort of funny, isn't it, that those were simpler times? I didn't think it could get worse. But it was definitely nicer to think that she was just mad.

Sometimes she was, only not so conveniently. [And you were half-dead and grief-stricken, but despite her path not crossing with Loghain's so far, Morrigan isn't about to go prodding the borders of that wound. She's no healer.

Kirkwall's market stalls are more bountiful than Denerim, less expensive than Val Royeaux's at least here. Fewer attempts at things meant to look elven but even as she tries to think of practical things, the jewellery is where she's stopped. As much the magpie as she was in her girlhood but with no one to come take anything intriguing from her hands this time, it's mostly a matter of keeping Kieran within sight.

Kieran shooting up like a weed (when did that happen) as if settling for a spell has allowed him to put down roots. Kieran with his strange collection of a family as he laughs at whatever someone's explaining to him a few stalls down--]

Does it feel strange to you that your life is a story to someone else? A thing that happened that they read a piece of written by someone who didn't know you? Passed about? [The hesitance comes because it's the two of them who do belong to parts of other tales regardless but the point still stands. She thinks.] I wanted to-- I think I wanted to see her the way I thought of her when I left. Just an old woman caked in mud, something to laugh about. To point at. "There she is, the one who saved the Hero and the Champion, come look."

[Pick your poison if you want something different and I'll roll with it!]

Her dirty paws and furry coat

Sundermount; witch house

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Sundermount; exploring

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Kirkwall; library

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Kirkwall; exploring

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wildcard;