[open] a little truth arrives in the dying of each day

[eolasemah]

WHO: Sina and you
WHAT: here we go
WHEN: mid-Harvestmere
WHERE: Hightown and then the Gallows
NOTES: All Sina logs from this point onward will involve discussions/dealing with death and illness, so if you're sensitive about those topics I recommend passing these by.

I. Just outside the Forest Garden [single thread please, 1-3 people max]

Sina still looks like Sina, but if Thedas had photographs, and the ability to compare a person's image of two years ago to their image today, only then would it become achingly clear how much mass she's lost. As the weather grows chill, she has to bundle up more and more just to go to work in her gardens, and even then is constantly cold. But she's been all right, all things considered; she's still upright, at least.

Until she isn't. Having felt a little strange since they found the elf children in the warehouse, Sina has chalked it up to the usual business and the gut-wrenching trauma of what they found. Her chest has felt a little heavier, her step a little slower, her hands a little colder, nothing worth calling a healer about until today: she's nearly down the stairs of the former Chantry when she abruptly loses consciousness.

Crumpling like a doll, Sina scrapes her leg on the last few steps and collapses to the ground, basket of herbs on its side, its contents splayed everywhere. She wakes up at once, but with bleary confusion, disoriented and burning with fever.


II. The Infirmary [ota]

Those who spent any significant time with the rescued elven children may also have caught what ails Sina now, but with a body already so ravaged by weakness, fighting it is clearly difficult for her. She's asleep most of the time, coughing when she's awake, and unable to keep food down.
It's not the first time she's been in this position, but it may be the last.

Comments

[foxsays]

Brave. She doesn't feel brave when there's part of her mind shouting at her to bolt, to go and run hard and fast until there's just the wind whistling past her ears to some spot where no one but the gulls can find her.

"Bravado's a pretty thing, people see what they want to see." Like her. Like now. She takes Sina's hands in hers - Nari wasn't exaggerating - to warm them and weighs what she wants to say. If it's fair. None of this is but there's too much that hasn't been said between them already that it hurts, that there were harsh words on her own end of things. "Look at someone and see all the things that make sense to them because that's easier than really looking and wondering but I lived the bard life without the music before I came here. You were my first friend after Korrin, I thought maybe you wouldn't mind a story."

A story that she can take as just a story where Araceli can still be the girl Sina's known since they met near two years ago if it doesn't sit right. Or she can be something else. It'll be a story either way, somewhere that isn't Thedas, that isn't shards and lyrium and cold hands.

[eolasemah]

Sina squeezes Araceli's hands, a feeble gesture but she means it. "Please," she says in the same quiet tone, clearly very much in the mood for a story.

[foxsays]

Araceli clears her throat, almost chokes on it but manages just about. "There was a thief, and she was a very good thief. The best thief. The guards never caught her no matter what she stole, daring as you please, in and out of the homes of the nobles and the rich; people said she leapt high over the rooftops even when they chased her, that when she ran over the bridges, along the waterways that the sea would lend a hand." Telling a story isn't-- well she's told the truth before but not quite like this, is this how it's meant to go? To be able to write herself in but out of it if Sina doesn't want to know that it's her friend doing these things? Her voice is shaky to start but it settles. This is familiar. Home. Salt and her hands warmed by the sun.

"The thief was very good at stealing hearts too - the best thieves are, but the very best know how to be gentle with them, you can't go breaking a delicate thing - but there was always the next challenge and the next. Something bigger. More exciting. Food to put on tables that weren't just her own. Only she was young. Most of it? Well we can guess it was the challenge, no? To do something very exciting and wild, to say I did it, none of you caught me and I did it, I can live happy knowing I was the only one.

"Now, the thing to know about this thief is that the sea loved her very well because she was as much the sea's daughter as she was her mother and father's, so the sea had a plan as the sea does for everyone but very much so for the lucky children born closest of it." And Araceli could stop here. Could turn the tale to something else and it shows in her face, the way her lip trembles, chin seems to crumple with it. Would she regret it? Not telling Sina the truth before she died? Or is this a selfish thing to assuage her conscience gnawing at her. "The thief," she trips over the words, starts again, "the thief made plans to steal the queen's jewels. Nothing else would do for her so she went to do that. Life though...life has other plans and there were assassins there to kill the queen - she was a thief but she knew her way about her blades, loved her home as much as any good citizen should, as anyone who loved the sea should love Her Grace Above the Waves - and so she took up arms to defend her."

Even here, she thinks, she could leave the story off. Araceli Bonaventura y Castell could be a thief who'd done a particularly daring thing, who'd done the right thing, who preferred to stay modest about it all in the aftermath but she smiles because sometimes she thinks about what all the people she loves here and at home would make of one another, Leandra most of all, and keeps going. "The queen thanked her by giving her the jewels she'd come to steal. And naming her one of her sworn queensguard. The first commoner ever to receive that honour. The first person from their own country. Two traditions broken in one night, and still she'd say the palace locks were the bigger triumph." Me, that's me, she thinks quietly since it's been a statement of fact every other time and not this fanciful attempt that wasn't very good but a story is better, let Sina fill in the gaps as she likes and have some comfort and distraction.

[eolasemah]

Listening raptly, Sina watches Araceli's face, and doesn't say a word until the tale is concluded. Her eyes are guileless as ever, deep and trusting as a fawn's, and they warm in a small smile when Araceli has finished speaking.
"This daughter of the sea," she rasps, "must have been well beloved, in her old land as well as the new." Her hand gives Araceli's another squeeze. "...and truly noble, to be capable of such change."

[foxsays]

"I wanted you to know." Because you're dying, because you won't get better, because it might eat a hole in me if there's this thing between us after we argued and I don't think I could swallow that-- those are selfish thoughts that she keeps to herself, those are for after when she's in her cups, when she allows herself to fall to pieces. "It was easier to be what people saw when they looked at me so I only told a few, people I love. Loved." Zevran and Leliana aren't here with them, the Outsider is gone, more than half to know the secret.

"I wish you could see it, my home, you wouldn't be cold there. You'd be so welcomed Sina," it seems impossible that she'd be unwelcome (despite knowing all the reasons why here; look at her, look at her as Araceli squeezes her hand with her own, Fade-touched). "There'd be some sailing but you could've gone to Estene to walk their forests and fields, into Ebeos through their groves and plains of flowers."

[eolasemah]

Sina seems slightly confused by the assertion; what else would she see, looking at Araceli? "You're always what I see," she replies, sleepily, calmly, unphased by any discomfort Araceli may feel. Nothing about the story is upsetting to her.
Allowing her eyes to close as Araceli's home is described, Sina nods, taking a moment before answering, with an unguarded weariness: "maybe I will."

[foxsays]

Sighing, she rubs her at her left thumb, adjusting how she's sitting; this clinic is colder, damper, her leg is hurting now. "You were honest with me," the garden, everything that wasn't her people so not for a human, "and before any of this it got me called many things." So it matters in little ways when it's okay each time.

Looking at Sina with fretful eyes, she wishes she'd brought Lux with her. "Is there anything you want? We've got thicker furs Korrin's friend brought us if you're cold." Maybe she'll cook, something simple and hearty that won't burn her mouth. "What happens when the Dalish pass? I know what happens to me, it comforts me but I don't know where I go to see you. After."

[eolasemah]

The question is one Sina has heard a lot lately, and she smiles while shaking her head, opening her eyes again. "Just you is nice," she decides, "but I wouldn't say no to Korrin too." She's nearly cut off by a cough, which she barely has time to stifle with a thin hand over her mouth as it shakes her whole body.
Once it passes, she lies back again, looking even more tired. There are tears in her eyes, partially from the exertion, and no doubt also from the question. "I don't know," she admits, almost timidly, "Uthenera is where the ancient elvhen went to sleep." Furrowing her brow, she winces and gives a little shrug. "We're given a staff, to help us along the way. Where we go is a mystery."

[foxsays]

Never a fan of the heavier coats preferred by some in Thedas, even when the snows piled up and the frost nipped, Araceli still shrugs out of her coat and lays it over Sina quick as she can for now while it's still got some warmth in it. "I'll make sure Korrin comes along. She can tell you about her scandalous drinking." Hadn't it been fun, when any drinking had seemed such a fun thing to joke about? This is the sort of thing where she'd think of offering her flask to ease the pain but Sina would cough and choke even with the watered stuff she carries about with her.

"So…" It's to buy her time, throat working past the bubble of her that tries to come out of her chest, that there isn't a place she can go. She can't stand by the sea like she would at home if someone died there, knowing that they're beneath the water, knowing that they've given their life to the place. Ancient elves and elves now are different too, as well as what she's trying to work through maybe not making sense. From the sceptical look she gives her hand and the green mark on it, maybe what she says isn't reassuring. "In dreams? If it's about sleep. And the Fade? And you're going on a journey somewhere?"

[eolasemah]

Sina sighs in quiet relief at the new warmth, and though she's still emotional, it calms her some. She's spent each day just trying to exist in a way that's somewhat comfortable, and that takes more out of her than anything else.
She nods while Araceli speaks, watching her with tear-filled eyes. She doesn't want to leave.
"When Ghilan'nain was dying, Andruil turned her into a halla," she says in a soft, quavering voice, "and my clan said I was our old Keeper reborn. Perhaps I'll become something else." She gives a little laugh, tears spilling in the process. "A halla could be nice. But I don't imagine I'm important enough for Andruil's notice."

[foxsays]

If the bed was a little bigger, if she didn't think the jostling would start Sina coughing again, Araceli would gather her up and lie down next to her. Make herself remember being as warm as they were in the summer months, bare as when they came into the world stretched out on the shore of the Wounded Coast. It had been in her bones then once she'd come out of the water to dry off.

"You've touched so many lives Sina. You give and you give and you give," you give too much, "even when it hurt. Maybe especially when it hurt? I don't know if that's my place to say, but that was what you did. There are lives that won't be the same for having you in the them. Why wouldn't she notice you for that?"

And I will go to the sea one day, be given back to what made me, and all things in it will take what I no longer need while the rest of me finds the place that I came from. Strange, to hear her mother and father's voice in both ears at once down here but they told her the same thing so many times all her life.

[eolasemah]

Even then, in the heat of summer, Sina had been cold. It's been hard to see, with the way time passes, but she's spent the past year wasting down to the wisp she is now, always cold, always shivering, like the runt of a litter who can't feed and won't last the night.
And she's known, at least for a while. She knows now more than ever, and it would all be so much easier if she just felt better, if she could be clear-headed and unimpeded by pain as she says goodbye. But that's not to be, and that's what upsets her so profoundly.
She listens to Araceli with deep sadness in her eyes, unable to agree or disagree, only wanting the words to suggest it won't stop, that it wasn't in the past tense.
She was going to be Keeper.
"Te amo," Sina whispers, her expression pained. It's the first time she's said the words in a language other than elvhen, mimicking the phrase as she's heard her friend say it, gathering its meaning by context. Somehow, from their completely separate worlds, she and Araceli have managed to converge in at least one small way.

[foxsays]

They can say goodbye. Martel was a shock enough that Araceli still hasn't let go, and Sina will still be part of her but this way she can have that moment to sit. Not to make any easier because how can it ever be easier to know that your friend isn't ever going to be with you again, that you aren't going to come back from your own adventures with things in your pocket for the other, that she'll still try to get hold of her on the sending crystal to invite her for dinner only to remember after that no, she's not there now. There's just a little time to breathe and maybe try to pretend that they're grown-ups.

(Children pretending to be grown-ups, girls and young women, still making mistakes, learning and fumbling and how was Sina married--)

"I know. I love you too," and her elvhen isn't good but she's picked up a little here and there (Leliana told her to learn all she could, elves outside the Dalish use some of the phrases too in passing), "ma vhenan."

That feels like what they're going to lose. A heart. Araceli cares, lies awake, worries herself raw at the edges about things but in a way that's a thief's way, a queensguard's way, a heart all tucked up in thinking it through, turning it over and over in her head until it fits. Sina cares. Sina loves. Sina's always been honest about her feelings. What happens when someone like that isn't there anymore?

"I should let you get some sleep, I can come back with Korrin. And Lux, he sleeps in the bed with us because he's so warm he'll curl up with you. And anything else, anything you need," she promises, voice barely above a whisper as she brushes Sina's hair from her face so she can kiss her cheek.

[eolasemah]

Though still tearful, Sina's smile blossoms when Araceli speaks to her in elvhen. It wasn't that long ago that she might have been offended by a human using the language, but Araceli is different. Besides, rifters can't be held to the same standards as native Thedosians. Araceli has become, in her way, Clan.

About to protest, Sina thinks better of it, since even she knows that working herself up too much right now would be a mistake; after all, she worked the healing tents and infirmary as much as any other nurse when she was still on her feet.
"I can't wait," she whispers, and closes her eyes to receive the kiss.