faderift | Her dirty paws and furry coat

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Her dirty paws and furry coat

WHO: Morrigan; open
WHAT: Guess who got her spooky witch home all set up in Sundermount? Also possibly poking around in Kirkwall for things
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Sundermount/Kirkwall
NOTES: Some discussion of the hunt for Flemeth, Morrigan being Morrigan. Starters in the comments.

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"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."

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Her dirty paws and furry coat

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