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

[circleprodigy]

Inessa chuckles quietly at that. "I've never been personally chased out, but Garahel and his bottomless stomach mean I have to watch for that It's even worse here, though I suppose it's a small price to pay for the conveniences we can now access." Camp life in Skyhold's shadow was something to be endured, but she never truly enjoyed it.

"Yours is an approach many here could benefit from, I think. Some of my mentors spoke similarly, about finding balance where possible. We owe it to ourselves to keep perspective.

It's strange; I spent all my early life in the Circle, certain that it would be my future. I planned for it, only for all I knew to come to an end. And yet, I found a life outside its walls with a purpose, a beloved canine companion, and dear friends I never would have met otherwise. And for all that journeying, I find myself living in Circle quarters once more, enjoying the best of both worlds. The best parts of my life have been those I never could have anticipated. Sometimes, those moments of loss and hardship lead to something worthwhile."

She can almost hear Ciri making a full-circle pun, which makes her internally sigh. It's bad (glorious) enough her roommate piles them on when she's present, but even when she's not? Unfair.

[foxsays]

"Yet we still live by how much we get in from the market, the more the sea out there freezes, the worse that's going to get. If people decide not to be so friendly with us, it changes again. There's a cost to being in Kirkwall. Shipping. Protection from piracy. Absorbing the cost of losses. Seasonal goods." It presents its own challenges and difficulties, the kind she's more familiar with as a Castilean who never quibbled about salt but who had to fight and steal for the sake of citrus fruits much of the year.

"Maybe it's what comes from home too; in a time of crisis we have to abandon or our own selfishness to become one crew. To work together as one. This is how we survived the only war we ever had." Phrased this way perhaps it softens the fact that there are times she finds the Inquisition deeply selfish at times, so many of them concerned with their own ends, what they might get or gain from it instead of what they might give, what they might do. "You understand then, to be part of a bigger thing and that we need to be ready to look to what we might take from something old to build for the future. That this is a step on the path to something more not for only ourselves."