I am certain of the universe (closed)

[overharrowed]

WHO: Julius and Petrana
WHAT: A visit was promised, so a visit will be delivered.
WHEN: Vaugely nowish
WHERE: Diplomacy division office
NOTES: Nerds nerding together, probably.

Julius had intended to be slightly more prompt in following up with the rifter mage who had reached out to him when he first arrived, but he had slightly underestimated the amount of work he found piled on his desk nearly from day one. With a new head of research firming up his department and the leader of the Other Powers project roping in Julius to help with the Qun of all things, he did not lack for occupation.

However, even if the state of the world was dire, Julius thought that manners were still important. So, too, was cultivating people who it might prove useful to know, either during his time with the Inquisition or after. If they survived, someone was going to have a major say in what happened to mages, after all. But with Petrana specifically, it was curiosity as much as anything that drove him to pay her a call.

After all, it wasn't every day one met a mage from another world.

He did a bit of research to pinpoint a time she would likely be in her office and would likely not be busy with something it would be hard to set aside. And then there he was, politely knocking at the door.

Comments

[ipseite]

It was Petrana who answered the door herself, small nug tucked under one arm to prevent her from bolting out of it given the opportunity - Julius was not immediately recognisable to her, but the position she now held within the Inquisition had led to growing somewhat accustomed to unexpected faces on the other side of doors. She was a figure of some visible significance, and it was hardly unusual to be approached unexpectedly-

“Please,” she said, courteous, after only a brief pause combing her mind to see if she did know him by sight and had forgotten, “come in, what has brought you to me?”

[overharrowed]

"My name is Enchanter Julius," he said, with a smile that was warm and the smallest bit sheepish. "You invited me to stop by your office a few weeks back, and I thought I would see if my tardiness had lost me the invitation."

It was more an acknowledgment of delay than an actual expectation of being kicked out, but politely delivered all the same.

[ipseite]

The slight query about her expression cleared and her smile warmed, a touch, as she closed the door behind him -

to continue to keep the nug from scampering out unattended, one might presume, and not simply to prevent his escape.

“Enchanter,” she said, ushering him not to her desk and the very serious seating arranged before it but instead to the more comfortable chairs by the fireside, where a teakettle rested upon a low table, a small and (to his eye) somewhat foreign glyph etched into its widest part. “Not at all; we all have much with which to occupy ourselves. Will you take tea?”

Most everyone did. The maternal approach she took to her position was one angle to play; there were two sides to the coin, but few enough had had occasion yet to see the other.

[overharrowed]

"Tea would be lovely, thank you." He moved toward the chair, but paused to pay the glyph special attention, clearly curious. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything more pressing? I get the impression that Inquisition leaders, especially never lack for anything to do; it took me weeks to come see you, and I'm merely a new arrival."

[ipseite]

“It is rather that way - I knew well what I was signing up for,” with a hint of ruefulness, as she pours pleasantly warm tea and sits, inviting him to do so as well. “But if I cannot make time for the rest of the outpost, I will do us all a grievous disservice. Particularly as I am already quite literally within a tower.”

No need to make it an ivory, metaphorical one.

The first version of this tag was better before I accidentally refreshed the page

[overharrowed]

"That's true, but - thank you," of the tea, "I understand not all rifters have thrown their lots in so completely. I admire your initiative." It's delivered with a smile, but sincerely; she seems to have her situation more fully in hand than many of the natives he's met since arriving. "Have you been in Thedas long? The gossip, which obviously I never listen to, has been frustratingly unspecific."

hi im late

[ipseite]

“Some months now - the better part of a half-year, I believe,” she says, her fingers curling around her cup and her gaze thoughtful, cut somewhere past him. Much has happened in that time- for her, for Thedas. She thinks, sometimes, of how much she left behind.

Some days, it is a leaden and heavy weight-

others, she could look about herself and imagine: this has always been.

After a moment, choosing her words carefully, “To me it seems: our lot has been thrown for us. We are as sailors in a storm- it is for us to decide only whether we shall captain the ship, or allow ourselves to be blown this way, then that way.” Her smile is not unkind when she says, “It is your choice to come here, Enchanter, and therein you possess a luxury that I do not - you may choose, in time, to leave.”

It wouldn't be uncomplicated, and she thinks it very unlikely, but it isn't out of the question that an opportunity might arise for him in ways it will not, for her.

“We who came here through the rifts, we will see this war out at its sharp edge whether it is with our hands on the tiller or in sullen fists at our sides. Shutting one's eyes to a truth does naught but make one blind - it is not my preference.”

backtag me forever

[overharrowed]

He nods, serious and thoughtful. "That makes a great deal of sense," he says, deliberate but not hesitant. "It isn't precisely the same, but there are some similarities to what it is to be a mage in Thedas. You still have choices, but none of your choices are 'I'll pass on the magic and have a mundane life, thanks.' At best you can hide what you are, but it's always there. Shardbearers, especially rifters, have a sharper and more frustrating version of the quandary."

Julius did not see his magic as problem, but he can certainly appreciate that being a mage has complicated his life in certain ways.

"And some rifters, at least, must be quite homesick. Though I wouldn't presume to guess for a particular individual."

[ipseite]

The sick feeling in her stomach whenever that particular subject is broached is not homesickness, quite; if her small smile is a little more fixed, if she doesn't look up from her tea at once, he seems polite enough not to notice.

“It is often the case in life that one must begin again,” she says, neutrally. “We are ever best served by embracing that truth.”

[overharrowed]

Rather than push, he says with a small smile, "I admit, you seem at first acquaintance to have a more graceful knack for it than I do. Half a year after I had to begin again from more or less nothing, I was still occasionally embarrassing myself in attempting something as simple as determining when and when not to haggle with someone selling me something."

It's deliberate, the way he invites her to gently join him in laughing at himself; an offering, or at least a foothold to a more pleasant conversational topic.

[ipseite]

She finds herself smiling before she's quite aware she's going to-

“I suppose to you it must all be so alien,” she says, tilting her head. “In truth, I must confess to you my grace is merely practise- this is not the first time I have been obliged to leave behind my life and begin a new one.”

It's hard to say if it's even the most dramatic.

[overharrowed]

He weighs, briefly, how heavy he wishes his answer to be. "Before the Mage-Templar War," he says, a bit less glib, "my life was expressly designed by the Chantry not to change dramatically. It did, sometimes, but not in the way we're discussing, exactly."

Mainly a lot of people died. But the framework stayed the same.

"It resulted in many of us having to learn very quickly, later, regardless of our personal politics. Those of us who are still here, at least."

[ipseite]

“I am familiar,” she says, a little more gently - a reassurance that he needn't cut open old wounds for her. There are some positions one might manage to rise to in ignorance, but head of diplomacy is not one of them. “In some ways, very familiar. Do you know,” with a small laugh, “the strangest thing is still so many men, practising magic.”

A shake of her head- “But for you it is not a choice.”

[overharrowed]

"Might anyone take up magic, where you are from then? Or choose not to, I suppose." Given the way she'd framed it, it could be either. He supposes, in some sense, it's two sides of the same question.

[ipseite]

“In theory, yes,” a little more slowly. “In the strictest sense, to discuss how it is that magic functions, yes- that is so. As might anyone take up music; there will be those who are gifted, and those who are not, but it is a skill to be taught.”

Her hands fidget a moment with her skirt, the edge of her teacup.

“It is not an unweighted decision. A conviction of witchcraft is a death sentence for the witch, and any children she may have.”

[overharrowed]

He nods, not because he knew, but to show he understands the gravity of what she said. "Perhaps it is too bold to ask so soon, and you may certainly decline to answer, but I admit to being curious. Under those circumstances, what led you to its study?"

Julius is aware of pushing a boundary, slightly, but he cannot resist asking all the same.

[ipseite]

“My husband felt that it was necessary,” she says, after an only slight pause, as if she can't possibly imagine why that might be troubling. “We were in exile, and he felt that it would be for the best if I were not entirely helpless, should the need arise.”

Not that she's terribly skilled at protecting herself- though she is learning, carefully.

“It was,” choosing her words, “a complicated time for us.”

[overharrowed]

"It sounds that way," he says, almost gently, though not patronizing. "It's something I never considered, you know. Whether I'd have chosen magic if given the choice." He supposes some mages do think that way, but it isn't his temperament. He tends to work in what is and what plausibly might be; before the rifters began arriving, the idea of other worlds was too abstract to interest him much.

"Do you find magic itself is very different here? You're the first rifter I've spoken to with first-hand experience to compare."