Whispering wind is blowing [Open]

[nadasharillen]

WHO: Nari and you! (And special for Cade and Simon)
WHAT: October catchall for Nari
WHEN: Early Harvestmere
WHERE: Various Kirkwall
NOTES: Anything that comes with Cade. Super-sina-sadness! Cami don't read this in Panera :P

[Chantry Forest - open; come in at any point]

It had taken Nahariel a good amount of time to go into the forest. She'd been before, of course, but not for this. This was different. Beginning this work meant acknowledging an ending.

Early light of morning finds her wandering, looking at the wood with the frank and evaluating eye of a carver. Just before midday, she's found what she wants. A branch - good, straight, sturdy, just fallen. Tall enough.

Midday finds her sitting on a large tree's roots, somewhere near the center, thumb rubbing the haft of Dahlasanor's arulin'holm. The Dalish ceremonial tool for the beginning and ending of a work had been well taken care of in her absence, but even so she oils, polishes, and sharpens it with slow deft strokes. She raises it, turns it to catch a beam of sun that had managed to pierce the canopy, and makes the first cut.

Her afternoon, and several afternoons after it, are spent carving with singular focus. Curling vines and herbs and flowers and grasses and trees grow slowly from the wood, twining around it. Thoughtful halla begin to graze and keep watch, curved around the sides. Constellations of Ghilan'nain's guiding stars rise over the fields.

The details are refined with patience that could only be born of love, the wood sanded and polished to a silken sheen. It's only after she raises and lowers the arulin'holm to make the final cut she'd been saving for it - the only rough place on the smooth surface - that she weeps. It's a deep sound, broken and raw, rising and falling like waves as she rocks side to side, her arms wrapped around Sina's funeral staff.

[Docks]

When she's not working, Nari is down in the harbor. Sometimes it's helping to load or unload cargo, sometimes learning to fish, sometimes carving small animals or puzzles for the local children out of scrap wood, sometimes telling them stories, and on the warm days, sunning with a farmer's flopping straw hat down over her face. No matter the activity, she's always glad to see you.

[Elsewhere!]

Catch her leaving or returning from the forest (Chantry or Planacene)! At the markets! Drinking in the Hanged Man! Something else!

[Chantry Forest - closed]

She'll meet the two of them at where the entrance to the Chantry would have been, a pack full of sketches and measuring tools and some simple lunch slung over her shoulder, a roll of carving tools fastened beneath it. Upon seeing them, Nari raises a hand in greeting. "Thank you again," she says. "Feel free to disagree, but I thought perhaps the right place for her would be about where she was before?"

Comments

[nadasharillen]

Araceli's laugh brings an answering smile from Nahariel, one corner twitching up as if it had a mind of its own. She spreads one hand in an expansive gesture towards the forest around them, "I bet none of those stuffed shirts up in Hightown has anything like this," she says with a touch of pride. Reaching her other hand out hesitantly toward Lux in the universal gesture of 'can I pet you?', she looks over at her companion. "It sounds nice, that way of life. Free. I'd like to think we'd live that way if we weren't so few," she says. "When your people are dwindling, any passion that doesn't help their plight seems like it has no way to avoid being hurtful."

[foxsays]

Lux sniffs, pricks up his ears before he slides out of Araceli's lap to Nari, butting up against her hand to say yes, good, now please move the hand feel how soft I am, uncaring of the matters being discussed over his head.

"Whatever magic went into this, it would've been beyond any of them," she agrees, still in awe in the fullest sense of the word. Sometimes she expects things from the wilder tales of Thedas to come out. A sylvan maybe. Not that she can picture them, not even with the pictures in the books - a walking tree is a hard thing to imagine for her - but this seems the sort of place for it.

Araceli's gaze drops, her smile softens; there are humans and there are humans, and they find ways to hurt one another because that's how the world seems to be. Doubting it'd do much good for Nari to hear that, she does what she can to keep that out of her voice. "There were a lot of things I learnt to swallow. Even when the terrible things crawled under my skin because people were looking all the time. A common girl can be replaced easy as you like. It's why I can't cook for one or two people, I've never known how not to because the place I lived when I left home was a choice: pay the rent or put food on the table. So I stole enough to put food on the table for everyone." Not quite the same but knowing your life is less to a great many people who wouldn't mourn your passing? She knows that.

[nadasharillen]

Obliging gladly, Nari buries her hand in the soft fur of his ruff, skritching her fingers about and watching for signs that will let her know where the best of places to attend to are. She listens to Araceli's tale as she does so, nodding thoughtfully.

"I hope it means something to know you're not so easily replaceable here," she says. "For one, I'm sure Korrin would notice," a cheeky grin, "and for two... well. We would too. And not just us, I'm sure."

[foxsays]

Every spot is a good spot, this is why whatever made foxes made them the shape that they are: all the scratchable and skritchable parts with plenty of fur to dig the fingers into.

"Having a life here is-- sometimes I stop and think about it? About how mad it is. Being so far away from everything. Does it ever feel that way to you? I know you aren't in entirely a different world but you and Sina, you're Dalish, this isn't how the Dalish live." Not just in a city either, it's being settled, being rooted almost even if there are trips and missions away, so many more people than there would be in a clan. Smiling, she laughs quietly in acknowledgement. "Gracias, my life wouldn't be the same without the people I have in it, even if I was doing all the same work that I'm doing and that I've been doing since I got here."