i’ve been waiting on the fault line | OTA

[limier]

WHO: Wren Coupe, Melys, Casimir Lyov, Finch Wicker + YOU
WHAT: Catchall for the month
WHEN: Mid- whatever this month is i give up
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Will edit as appropriate

 

Editing these in as I go, if you’d like a specific starter please hmu on plurk or discord (oeste#8807). ♥

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[aestivation]

"There’s nothing to apologize for," As niceties go, this one’s not entirely reflex. Waiting requires the act of anticipation. His face holds smooth and still; it seems a mistake to attempt a smile now, with that a piece of this strangeness about the Gallows. "I’ve been watching the waves."

His eyes lock on hers a moment, before tipping back to icy swell. The tips of his fingers curl slightly, release. Not trepidation. Not its absence, either. Time slips, and the thoughts spill forward, more freely than they might.

"Nevarra's circle was destroyed." The city's. Home — for a while, for long enough. He'd never wanted to leave, "A rift, I'm told."

[dashing]

She is silent, turns her gaze to the waves once Casimir looks away from her. Her first instinct is to say that she's sorry. The next is that not all would mourn their Circles as she had mourned her own, and she exhales slowly.

"I had heard of it's fall." She had no reason to doubt that it was a rift, save for that there were plenty in the Inquisition with a disdain for the Circles that she can well imagine it being deliberate, or as move to sabotage the Inquisition.

"Do you regret its collapse?" Or— perhaps that is not the question to ask. "Is it significant for you?"

[aestivation]

"I didn't expect to see it again."

Not before, not after. Making Hasmal a place had become its own significance, and then it had all receded, shrunk from the edges of a map only lately given view. He pauses, considers the weight of each word, estimated against an absent scale —

"But it's different to know."

[dashing]

"Yes. I— think that can be the nature of loss. It can strike us in ways we do not anticipate. To know that something can never be done, rather than thinking it is only unlikely, can be a wound all the same."

Gently, she rests a hand on his forearm. "I am sorry. Do you need a moment, before we go on to Kirkwall?"

He might not. It might not matter in the same way, a moment might be meaningless, but it would be wrong not to offer.

[aestivation]

Upon any given day, Casimir might be nudged, led, stumbled against; guided, moved, grabbed, drawn back. Countless small motions, the mechanical navigation of his presence. It's rarely anything to note, as Brycen had once bid him to —

(Note them he does, a silent list of accounts.)

This seems different. Lingers. A gesture of offering, and not utility? Perhaps that's what seems to echo now: A conversation had, a dead mother, a different tower gone. Difficult to number them, to stack them end by end. Easier to lay palm to sleeve,

Easier to watch the sea.

"No, thank you." He lets it rest there, doesn't move to reciprocate; an unintuitive task, too likely to go awry. "I'm ready."

And cautious about the boat, the water, the slipping boards.

"Where did you go, after Starkhaven?"

If he's been told, he can't recall.

[dashing]

She's relieved there is no reciprocation, in some way. Comfort is not her area of expertise, and physical contact is better reserved for those of close acquaintance. Generally, contact comes hand in hand with conflict, and she better reacts to it when it comes in the shape of sparring or battle.

"Very well." And so they move to the boat over the moody slate of the water.

She takes a moment to reply, briefly wondering if he means the recent trip there, and then realising that probably makes little sense.

"A number of the Starkhaven mages were sent to Kirkwall. I had a relative already in that Circle, and across the Circles of the Free Marches, so I was sent to the White Spire." Val Royeaux was very far from home.

[aestivation]

"Orlais," Was it quite different? He knows the answer to that already, can at least extrapolate from his own years — "We'd a Senior Enchanter Amsel, of Hasmal. I'd not wanted to presume."

He knows the mechanics of elven blood well as anyone; even so.

"I don't believe she accompanied the Inquisition," But he'd been later to depart, and they'd never been close. "Was it your first such journey?"

Outside the Circle.

[dashing]

"A cousin to a great aunt, on my father's side, I think." Honestly, it was hard to place, to find how things fitted together when you were taken from your family so very young. Many things are forgotten, and there is no one able to remind you. She wondered, at times, if that might be better - not be reminded, not to feel.

"Myrobalan said she did not. Apparently she wanted to explore Thedas, a little." She's not sure if she approves of an old woman going off alone, or if she applauds it, or if she is upset that she didn't consider duty and attend the Inquisition, or if she's simply upset that she isn't here so that Herian could meet her. She is finding herself more and more aware of selfishness in herself that seems without end.

"From Starkhaven to Val Royeaux? Yes. I had... only once left Starkhaven, before. It was not nearly so far a journey."