And I can't navigate the stars like my father

[foxsays]

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open
WHAT: Coping, coping, absolutely coping with life at present
WHEN: Timestamp for Haring
WHERE: Kirkwall and the Wounded Coast
NOTES: References to Sina's death, will update with others. Actionspam is good, I'll switch up to follow.

Kirkwall; the docks
For a change, there isn't work to be done at the docks. Or not all the time.

Or even most of the time.

No, most of it is Araceli with her boots off, trousers rolled up to the knees or skirts tucked back so her feet can kick back and forth water cold enough that it'd sting if she weren't used to it. A flask is never far from her hand (the fox isn't far either, an unhappy pacing creature ready to bark in alarm with his fur puffed up twice his usual size) that she might share if you ask nicely. You might not want it, why would she need a sailor's ration right now?

Most days there's a stack of letters getting smaller as the days go on, all with the same name on them being slipped into the waters to be carried to wherever they're meant to go. It was always time to get rid of them but as she holds up one - fumbles it, numb fingers from the rum or the cold or both - she stops, looks it, sniffs away her smile at it.

"Two years. More than that. Time to go where he went too."

The Gallows;
Life carries on the way life always carries on. When Martel died and word came she was the one to pick through his room for things people shouldn't get their hands on, with Sina she doesn't have to do that but she does have actual work to do that might swallow her if she's lucky. There are always shipping reports and forecasts, any strange sightings even if someone might have been drunk or just seeing things compared against anything the books here know about the sea, progress on what the Inquisition actually has that she can pass on elsewhere.

A volume on spirits is tucked away somewhere in the stack, light reading. Everyone reads strange things when they're grieving and wondering where dead people go when it isn't their own don't they.

The lute is in the office for now though and the afternoons find the door closed most of the way so she doesn't disturb anyone working nearby while she plays and sings because you can't let the bard skills go rusty, and it's one of the better ways of working through it.

The Wounded Coast;
Some days and Araceli doesn't want to be in Kirkwall. Wants to be away from the bustle of the city, from a job she's not putting her all into presently if she's entirely honest about it (given the circumstances-- she could be blamed, someone could point fingers but Sina is dead and she's not about to turn her heart to stone to make another person happy) so she makes for the stabels to saddle up her nuggalope.

The Wounded Coast isn't particularly special she can ride there without someone being offended by a great overgrown nug thundering along the paths, down to the water. The black fox goes scampering over the shingle to hunt down anything that he can scavenge or pick a fight with, the nuggalope follows sedately to the patches of grass.

Out here though she can kick off her clothes, weigh them down with her boots and most of her weapons - one or two stay strapped to her, this is Thedas and she's not foolish - to swim. Or to take a deep breath and submerge herself for a worryingly long time if someone strolls past at the wrong moment but sometimes the only place to be yourself is where you're from, and this is as close as she'll get.

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

Comments

The Wounded Coast

[iceblade]

There are plenty of days when Skadi doesn't want to be in Kirkwall, either. Kodlak needs regular exercise anyway, so when the stifling (to her) air of the city gets to be too much, she takes her hart to the Wounded Coast for a change of pace. While the mountains are more to her liking, a little variety never hurt and she enjoys the sound of crashing waves.

Her mind strays to the notion of finding some 'sport', aka thinning the bandit population that seems to infest the place like bed-bugs. She's soloed them before and will again, though spotting a nuggalope ahead has her smiling in recognition. As Stablemaster, of course she's aware of the magnificence that is The Walrus. So she guides Kodlak in that direction, who announces them with that hart cry.

[foxsays]

Life is one of two ways. As if underwater, slower for her, dulled to a roar in her ears she would ignore if she could or it's the first gasp when breaching the surface, overbright, burning. The cry is the second; a hand jerking the reins hard until the nuggalope rears, and her heart hammers in her chest until she can calm him down.

It's too brittle to be a smile on her face, a hand slow to uncurl from the rapier's hilt even once she recognises the face. "Skadi," and her voice is tighter than last time they spoke, "I hadn't expected company."

[iceblade]

Tugging on Kodlak's own reins, Skadi guides him into halting, then she raises an eyebrow as those finer details are met with a perceptive eye. She tilts her head, looking the smaller woman over. "That's up to you, lass. If you're not of a mind to have any, Kodlak and I can ride onward. There's always bandits to fight somewhere on the coast, if we do so long enough."

[foxsays]

Last time she did any fighting there was blood magic involved, though that's not the sort of thing you tell someone even if the rumours are always rife about goings-on in the Gallows. Normally better able to weigh it up, it still sounds tempting. Stupid but tempting. The ugly side wanting nothing better than to lash out.

"They'll be higher up in the hills then, not down by the shore, I haven't seen any of them there. I'll ride with you." Spare herself the noise in her head for a start as she urges the nuggalope into moving with her thighs. "You come here often?"

The Gallows

[circleprodigy]

After Inessa's designated time set aside for red lyrium research, she departs that project's room alone. Garahel is never allowed to join her when actual laboratory work is underway, for good reason. She's passing by the Naval Presence office on her way to the stairs when the lute music has her pausing to listen. After a moment of getting lost in the music, the young Warden feels uneasy about just standing outside like an eavesdropper and quietly pushes open the door further to look inside. Upon spotting Araceli, she smiles a little, not wanting to interrupt but politely making her presence known.

[foxsays]

When she reaches the line about the strength of water, Inessa appears at the door in a timely interruption that has her steadying the lute in her lap with a discordant series of notes when her fingers slip on the strings before she resumes playing again, softer than before.

"Warden Serra," politeness she can manage since it's working hours and Araceli is putting herself in here, in the Gallows, to ostensibly do some damned work, "I hope I wasn't disturbing you, I apologise. Or is there something I can assist with?"

Was her lack of appearance noted lately? She did make arrangements, tried to show up as often as she could but she isn't entirely sure what she might have missed though hopefully nothing, she doesn't know what she could handle right now.

[circleprodigy]

Inessa shakes her head, quick to reassure. "You weren't disturbing me at all. In fact, it's soothing to hear some music in theses halls. You play beautifully." She smiles a little, but it's tinged with sympathy, having indeed taken note of who has been present and who hasn't.

"I have no immediate business-related excuse at present, though if you wish to discuss how our projects might overlap, it's an option." Losing oneself in work is Inessa's go-to strategy for coping, to absolutely no one's surprise. Still, she's not going to assume Araceli operates the same way. "If now is not appropriate, I quite understand."

[foxsays]

Carefully setting the lute down by her desk, Araceli slides off so she's not propped against it with a moment's pause to smoothe the front of her coat out. "When we were in Skyhold I'd go up to the roof to play, here I have a door all to myself but they're good halls if you strip them back." A lot of things are good when stripped back, the old repurposed. "Thank you though, it's been a while since I practiced last."

Or did it the way she once did, for hours at a time until her fingers ached then refused to move the way she wanted them to but there's no time quite like fresh grief to revisit old habits.

"Ah, is this the notes I left?" When did she leave those? "I should have come in person but I wanted someone to have them. The rift over the sea-- well if you have any questions I can clear the desk." Norrington had made what a more charitable Araceli might call a suggestion to request access to all of Inessa's research when they'd been discussing red lyrium, it had taken too much not to ask if he'd struck his head.

The Wounded Coast (again)

[gatheringstorm]

At least one of those days, Korrin accompanies Araceli to the coast, desperate to get away even if only for a little while. It's not city life she has a problem with, but between Sina's garden in the Gallows and the forest in Hightown, not to mention the visible grief on everyone's faces, she's practically drowning in her own. Perhaps later, she'll curl up with her kadan and they can get very drunk together, but for now she'll keep her sobriety while they're on a coast where bandits have been known to roam.

Not seeing any now, though, she smirks faintly as she watches Lux dart off and Asher the Second get comfortable with his fellow nuggalope. Since they're relaxed enough to just graze, she'll take that as a cue to strip down as well. Reaching into her pack, she draws out a ring of Rivaini design, with waves along the band.

"I was told this would help me breathe underwater for half an hour at a time. Want to help me test it?"

[foxsays]

One of them has been drinking. Watering down the flask isn't happening currently so Araceli has been drinking solidly since they got back after Sina died. Flushed from that, the sting of the water with a southern winter, it takes her a while to answer.

Floating away on the current is tempting, the cloak pressed in her hands by an older woman in Llomerryn with winedark eyes who'd held her hand without flinching laid out on the shore.

"What did you get?" Korrin has a collection of items that do odd things they shouldn't be capable of, it must be growing still, maybe this is how she wants to fill up their space in Kirkwall, but she asks anyway, ready for an answer that won't satisfy when she's hurting, when she's angry. Also she can't see it properly, it's too much squinting in the weak winter sun with this much rum in her. "Is it so you can race the fish?"

[gatheringstorm]

Korrin certainly hasn't held back from drinking but between the two of them, she's -at least for now- relatively sober. Given her mass, getting genuinely drunk on non-qunari brews has to be a deliberate act of will for her. And it will happen...back home, in their apartment, with no one else to see and judge. The pain at Sina's death still lingers, but she's not going to add to it by letting something happen to Araceli because she wasn't sober enough.

She holds out her hand for Araceli to inspect the trinket. "It's just a ring, of Rivaini make. It makes sense they'd get the most use out of something like this, right?" There's a brief smile that almost reaches her eyes at that last question, but she shakes her head. "A qunari racing a fish? They'd beat my bulky ass every time. I thought it would help with the project, though; for diving, or if I get thrown off the ship in a storm or whatever. I like your cloak, but for me, this will do fine."

[foxsays]

As if the sea would hurt her. Outsider, Outsider do you know her hurts these days (he must, he was the sea made flesh in a different way, and when she held his hand it was holding a piece of home) when she weeps into the waters? Korrin didn't come out that morning of her birthday here to lie out in the sun naked as the day their mothers' birthed them. Sina did. Shivering but not afraid to step into the water, to look over all of Araceli's tattoos.

Half-swimming, half-wading up on the very tips of her toes until she's out, she turns it over in her hands. It'd fetch a good price for a fence. Korrin's talking work at least, which is a change. Maybe. Broken shells, tiny stones, loose grit too coarse to call itself sand cling to Araceli's feet as she hands it back on the way to shake out the cloak made of something not leather, rougher, not unlike how a shark is if you reach out a hand to touch it. "When I said feel everything, I don't mean for it to be an invitation to do anything reckless." To make herself clear because Araceli has her impulsive moments - riding off for Craintellier after a secret mission to Tevinter, following a Venatori infiltrator and throwing knives at him when it became a chase spring to mind - but Korrin has fought dragons so there's a scale to be weighed, measured, balanced appropriately. "Don't go diving into red lyrium or wrestle a fucking sea dragon if we ever find one."

She's not saying she doesn't trust you. She's just saying that there are some moments where she doesn't trust you in possession of a ring that lets you breathe underwater.

"I can go swim somewhere deeper if you want to try finding me? I have the experience without." Not boasting, she always swam, it builds up the lungs for this sort of thing and wrapped in the cloak even if it feels bizarre to have another skin pressed to hers damp as she is, there's no denying how much it changes.

the docks

[provenforce]

Rey is only on the docks because she has designs to go into town, however when she spots Araceli she veers off track. Hands tucked into the pockets of the coat that Araceli had convinced her to buy in Llomerryn, she stops just shy of standing next to her. Padawan, per usual ghosts her steps, sitting down when the young woman comes to a stop.

"Aren't you supposed to put letters in bottles before throwing them into the water?" Not that Rey has much experience with that, but she'd read stories.

[foxsays]

At the sight of a strange dog so much larger than himself, Lux gives a warning yip that Araceli lazily bats her hand at with the letter she was about to let go of before she looks at Rey then turns it over again.

I haven't the bottles quite yet, she'd like to say but she's not drunk enough for that so instead she looks at it, traces a name written in her own looping hand and sighs. "They have a better chance of going where they're meant to go this way. This is the sea, the blood of my people," she explains - is it an explanation? Or is it justification to herself, to what bears witness around her - as she worries at the edges of the one in her lap. It's old, tattered, the paper yellowed from life beneath floorboards now. "I want to be rid of them, they're taking up space but I don't believe in burning things."

[provenforce]

Padawan huffs at the fox, entirely unbothered by the tiny creature. It would take more than that yip to get her hackles up.

Frowning, Rey sits down next to Araceli, her own legs tucked up underneath her rather than dangling over the edge of the dock. She knows how cold that water is and isn't interested in freezing her legs off today.

"Letters for people from your home?" she guesses. She'd thought about writing a few times. Putting thoughts somewhere so they weren't constantly swirling around her mind. But then, she hadn't left that many people behind.

[foxsays]

"Yes. I only have these left. My duelling instructor, gone. My dearest friends and lovers, gone." One and the same for the queensguard since they'd all come together as they had and that had cracked something in her to let those go. "My parents, gone. Just Leandra. She's...I wrote the most to her."

How strange it seems now (how stupid, how risky, but she'd been so homesick so long, wanting some way to reach them) to say she'd done this much for this long. She looks up at Rey, embarrassed.

"It was foolish. How can I send a thing home here?" Find an agreeable demon to hash out terms?

The Docks

[onlyhymns]

Perhaps their relationship isn't a close one, or one that involves much talking (from him, anyway) but Cade is a sensitive sort and can tell when something is wrong. So one of these days, when Araceli is sitting with her bare legs swinging over the water, she finds a quiet presence at her side.

[foxsays]

Cade's listened to her talk, was kind before when she was aching deeper than her bones from a thing done to her that even now she doesn't want to touch; there's still an anger on his behalf for things not done right, a hope that perhaps he might find some peace, something to make of a life that's his.

(They all have to do that now. Settle. Make good on plans. Each of them requiring a holdfast.)

"Hola," she has to clear her throat when it verges on a croak. "Forgive me, I'm not-" unlike her she fumbles the flask she means to move out of the way, knocks it over with a clatter before she can right it. "I thought here would be a place to sit and let it all wash right over me, a great wave and that scours and drags it all back to the sea, everything...everything."

[onlyhymns]

Cade watches her a moment, but averts his gaze when Araceli's composure falters. "What happened?" he asks, wondering if she's afflicted by the same thing that's given the Gallows such a strange vibe lately.

the docks;

[universal_charm]

Kirk debated for a long time if he was going to approach Araceli or not. He had spoken with her in quite some time, a failing all his own, but watching her he thought that he should either move on or attempt to offer some comfort. Otherwise, it felt like a sick sort of voyeurism.

He approached slowly, nodding to the fox and waiting for Araceli to acknowledge him, mentally counting down to a point at which he would take silence as a request to leave.

[foxsays]

Not so out of it that she doesn't notice footsteps - a note in the office, if she's needed urgently for non-sending crystal matters - Araceli turns, pushing hair out of her face with a frozen hand.

"James? I didn't think to see you here." Watching a girl toss letters into the sea instead of sending them on (how do you send letters home when you don't know where home is now?)

[universal_charm]

"Seems we both come here to remember," he nodded to the letters she was casting into the sea.

He approached closer and moved to come and sit beside her, though he kept a polite distance, unsure of how much closeness she wanted right now. Though if she moved closer, he wouldn't push her away.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked quietly.

wounded coast

[dashing]

Herian couldn't swim, before. Maybe a desperate paddle, but nothing that would really keep her afloat. She mistrusted water that was too deep and kept away from it where she could; it was dangerous, and worthy of a certain measure of respect. That was some months ago, prior to Cosima offering to teach her, though lessons with Cosima tended to involve a good deal of lazing in the sunlight afterwards, and she couldn't be so selfish as to always draw Cosima away from her duties. As with all things, swimming demanded practice.

It was a bonus that it allowed a strange removal, of sorts, from reality, a weightlessness that life rarely afforded her.

As it is, she only realises she is not alone in her plans to swim at this particular spot when she spots the nuggalope, and by that point it seems rude to turn around with acknowledging its owner. "My apologies, Lady Bonaventura. I did not mean to interrupt you."

[foxsays]

Nuggalope grazing, a fox somewhere off to pick fights with whatever small crustaceans are accepting all challengers down on the shore today, Araceli rouses herself from where she was drifting rather than swimming, pushing back the hood of the cloak fanning about her in the water.

"Señora Amsel?" It's been too long since she last saw Herian in the flesh, to see her out here-- not that Araceli could say she knows her well but out by the sea isn't where she'd picture her. "No, not at all please if you came to swim then I don't own the waters, I just needed away from Kirkwall for a time."

[dashing]

"Thank you." She slips from the saddle, allowing the horse to graze as best it can on the Coast, robes easily pulled away and folded, kept near the water for easy redressing once she exits. If there is any self-consciousness in the act, it does not show, though she pulls on something so she's not entirely down to her underthings in the cold of the water. When her temper and skin feels like it is always running hot, the (probably unhealthily cold) water holds great appeal.

"Cosima has been teaching me how to swim," she says, by way of explanation as she steps down into the water. "I did not want to neglect my practice when there was still the chance of it."

She feels— less socially capable than usual, which is perhaps quite the statement, given her usual manner.