[OPEN] Get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail

[nadasharillen]

WHO: Nari and you!
WHAT: Open for Drakonis
WHEN: Throughout the month
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Darktown Stuff, general CW for mention of character death and related grief, other CWs posted in their specific threads

Much like the month itself, Nahariel slips between foul and fair as the tight bud of her grief shows the very first small signs of opening. On the good days there are faint smiles, on very good the warm chuckle that so easily issued from her before Sina's death. On the bad days her feet drag to her work, she stares at the plans she'd begun to draft for too long before making new marks. On very bad days her time is spent curled in bed staring dully at the ceiling or down at the Gallows docks no matter the weather, monosyllabic at her most talkative.

Either way, the world turns onward.

[Not necessary, but feel free to specify if you'd like a good day or a garbage day in your header!]

I. Hightown

Being near the blackened ruins of the Chantry Forest is still difficult. Despite that, Nari can regularly be found walking to and from the area. Sometimes it's to harvest what uncharred heartwood can be salvaged from the charcoal spires that once were trees. Most often it's to the still-standing grove where the statue of Andraste reaches out her hand to care for the space; clearing away wilted offerings, spent candles and the spilled wax around them, replacing papers or notes that have been tugged by the wind out from under the rocks that held them. And, when the ground begins to thaw, turning over the soil in preparation for planting the first beds of flowers.

Sometimes she can be heard murmuring as if conversing quietly with someone, although there is no-one there.


II. Darktown

The elf's initial survey of the area, its strengths and weaknesses (mostly the latter), has begun. When she isn't pacing out spaces and taking scrawled but detailed notes with the aid of one or two volunteers (you, perhaps?), she's bent over a table covered in drafting tools and rolls of cheap parchment with a quill or charcoal stick in her hand, the appropriate smudges on her skin, and a look of intense concentration that wrinkles the Crafter God's vallaslin spread across her brow, the humble beginnings of her plans appearing.

Sometimes the wind howls through the space like a wounded beast, grabbing at the edges of her plans, and once in a great while it wins, sending her sprinting and wide-eyed after them, Dalish curses bursting from her like the first blast of water through a broken dam.


III. Wildcard

When she's not doing these things she's sitting around carving in various places; little figures, a complex bracelet, a set of odd and complicated dice, something that looks like it might be a handle, boxes that she sells for a little extra income. Fixing chairs and tables in the Hanged Man (a neverending task), trying to get back into fighting shape in the courtyard, walking everywhere, visiting you, something else entirely!

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

"If you're all right with a spoilt Orlesian nug mooning after you," he says through a grin. "You're off to just the right start with her."

Spoiled or no, the Comtesse yet maintains her manners. Appropriate to a nug, anyway--finishing her first bite, she tucks the bark strip between her teeth and carries it back to her nest, leaping it up to secret it away beneath the cushion. Only once it's safely stashed does she resume her curled-up spot on the pillow, and extend a foreleg to paw at Myr's arm in a bid for attention.

Which he is too happy to give, reaching over to trail a finger up from the Comtesse's tiny hand to her shoulder to find her head and give it a thorough scratch between the ears. "So you're all moved in," he says to Nari as he does. "How are you?" How was it? he does not ask, knowing what she'd been about all through the day while he worked. (While his absence provided what he surmises was much-needed space.)

[nadasharillen]

Nari pushes another curl from the wood, beginning to strip the rest of the bark, "I do my very best to be of use," she says, watching the nug's evident pleasure as Myr scratches her, "especially after so abruptly taking over half of her space."

As far as her? Well. Her work continues smoothly, even as she stops to think. "I'm... something," she says. "I don't know yet. It's been--" another trailing pause, the soft noise of her knife's regular strokes taking over for her, providing a counterpoint to the sound of the harbor waves rolling into the island. "--a lot," the elf finishes, huffing a laugh through her nose. "I find myself saying that often of late."

[faithlikeaseed]

It's been a lot.

That's a sentiment Myr knows quite well, even if he's not given much voice to it. His usual sunny smile softens to something sadder to hear it. "You've had ample cause," he replies. "Maker knows, it has been a lot--and you've shouldered more than your share of it."

Sina; her forest. The templars and the rifters and all the researchers who'd have worked themselves to death if it weren't for the unsung heroes like Nari who'd shouldered the job of looking after them. Kit.

Myr's breath hitches a little at that last thought and he's a moment setting it gently aside. "Would be nice to get a moment away from it all to breathe and sort through everything. Can you, now...?" There's a tentative note to the question; he knows too well how ceaseless work was a distraction meant to prevent just that kind of reflection.

[nadasharillen]

Nahariel chuckles, although the sound is a bit despairing. That's what the hunting trip to the Planasene had been meant to be, and the result was its near opposite: there's more to be sorted and a distinct feeling of there being less room to breathe. Watching consciousness repeatedly fade from Cade's eyes, all that had transpired afterwards, repeatedly making herself vulnerable for reasons she couldn't explain if she'd wanted to, how returning to Kirkwall had clamped it all down again into business as usual, and--

A sharp pain in her thumb interrupts her thoughts, and as the blood wells slowly from the thin seam of the cut she'd made Nari bites her lip to stifle a yell that's equal parts frustration at herself for being so careless and frustration at everything else. Sina, the flu, the Chantry forest, Kit, her family, Cade, the jagged spikes of incapacitating grief brought on by sounds, smells, the feel of the wind, nothing at all, and herself scrabbling for control of any of it and finding no hold. Even her own hands betrayed her.

(And the Comtesse was looking at her with brief and subdued alarm.)

"I nicked myself," she explains, since Myr had certainly heard the strangled noise, "it's fine. Small. Also yes, please, a walk would be lovely."

[faithlikeaseed]

He'd heard--and when she explains his look of brief startlement changes to sharp concern, and he holds out his hands to her. "Bring it here," his tone makes it an invitation--refusable--and not an order. "I'm not much of a healer but I can manage a nick, if you'd like. And then we can go get some fresh air. Somewhere quiet."

Somewhere they might not be overheard; it isn't that he distrusts his neighbors, but the habits of the Circle die hard. (And if that frustration's the sort to yield to a little shouting in company, so much the better they not disturb anyone with it.)

The mention of a walk has the Comtesse's attention as well, smoothing over her unease at the sudden scent of blood. She sits up a little higher, long ears twitched forward in a nuggly expression of profound interest.

[nadasharillen]

Nari almost wants to keep it, that dull throb that she can make sharp again with a simple squeeze of thumb and forefinger so she can bite through the confused scatter of her thoughts whenever she likes—at least until it heals—but she simultaneously doesn’t want to distress Myr with such things. The latter wins out, so she slides the wood to the side and moves to place her injured hand in his open ones.

“...Thank you,” she says, managing to sound mostly grateful. “It looks like the Comtesse would like to come along.”

[faithlikeaseed]

A nick wouldn't be so much to heal for someone experienced in the art--and it's really not for Myr, either--but he's still got to focus on it, coaxing the light of Creation into his cupped palms, to clot blood and knit flesh back together where the knife's marred it. "You're welcome," he says once he's done, giving her mended hand a brief friendly squeeze before releasing it. "And I've no doubt she does; she wouldn't bestir herself this morning. D'you mind the extra company?"

[nadasharillen]

"Not at all," Nari replies, rubbing her fingers together wonderingly once Myr finished the spell and released her hand; it still tingled. "She'll lend our expedition some prestige."

Amidst the rustling sounds of outerwear being donned, and then the quiet creak of her opening and holding the door, Nari makes a query with a modicum of awe, "What does it feel like, to use magic?"

[faithlikeaseed]

Surrounded as he'd been most of his life with other mages--and templars, of course, but the Chantry required a certain professional disinterest from them when it came to their charges--Myr's not had much opportunity to field such a question. Especially not asked in such a tone (though it puts him in mind of a question Beleth had once put to him about his beliefs), with awe but none of the fear non-mages often brought with them.

He's accordingly a little slow in answering as he wonders over it, chivvying the Comtesse in her glyphed harness out the door in front of him. "A little like running--or fighting," or sex, he doesn't say. "If you're fit and in good practice, it's wonderful--a little frightening and it takes so much out of you if you're casting for at all long--but when it all works together, you feel in your bones that you're doing what you've been made to do. Even being worn out after is sweet and satisfying."

The Comtesse takes off down the hall toward the stairs at the characteristic scramble of an eager nug, leaving the elves behind to follow at their leisure. Myr smiles to hear her go, with the ticking of little fingernails on the stone. "If you mean what's a spell itself feel like--that's by the sort of magic you're calling. Primal sparks or burns or freezes--Creation's like having light in your veins, or a song. Spirit feels like trying to grab hold of greased glass; someone better with it might say different, but I'm not skilled in anything but barriers."

Which leaves one of the traditional schools out, but, well--even the Dalish mages he'd spoken with didn't all know or agree with that particular division of their mutual art. Maybe she won't ask.

"Is it like that for you, with the building and the carving--feeling like you're fulfilling the measure of your making?"

[nadasharillen]

Nari doesn't know enough of the formal schools--or of magic--to know what was missing from Myr's litany. Elemental spells she'd seen, and healing. Sina's plant growth. She knows of barriers. The horror of the magic that had taken her companion's sight was far removed from all of that, and so she asks nothing of it, content to furrow her brow and look at her fingers. To try to imagine what it might be like to feel them full of light, or song.

"A bit like that, yes," Nari replies thoughtfully, reaching an arm out to brush Myr's sleeve absently as they come to the stairs, in case he wanted to hold it as another point of steadiness. "It's good to be tired, and to be able to look and see what your effort made. There's a kind of joy in that. Simple, pure." Despite the lift of her words, she sounds weary.

It had used to be those things. Now she just works to exhaust the wolf that's taken up residence in her chest, hungry and snapping and pacing. Always pacing. Or at least to exhaust herself around it enough to sleep. It had been like this when Sina was getting worse, before Nari had accepted that there was nothing to be done. It was here again, but this time she didn't understand why.

She'll miss a step near the bottom of the staircase as her thoughts swallow themselves again, and then catch her balance with a rueful laugh. "Abelas, I'd make a poor walking stick."

[faithlikeaseed]

Given so gently, the offer of help doesn't go amiss; he reaches to take her arm as they descend, his own hold light. Not that he doesn't brave the steps regularly alone--but he's still put a foot wrong often enough to take help where it's given. (And maybe, maybe it's an excuse to offer a little comfort to someone who sounds like she needs it.) "The sort of joy we all need more of lately," he murmurs as they descend, a note of melancholy braiding through the words.

It would be nice, to go off alone with his magic and practice until he's mana-spent and weary. To not think about secrets, or the ceaseless swirl of sorrow the world's become, or how few the bright spots in it (but oh, how bright they shine)--

She stumbles, he stumbles and recovers, reaching to steady her out of gallant instinct. "Only a distracted one, I'd think. What's eating at you, cousin?" Also a gallant instinct. It isn't like Cade, where worry constrains him not to press too hard; he doesn't feel the least bit awkward asking her.

cw: sina death things, mention of self-harm

[nadasharillen]

She nearly demurs, but the easy familiarity that had grown quickly between them prompts at least some measure of honesty. "I... don't know," Nari says-- and it really sounds like she doesn't. "It's partly having seen my family again for the first time after Sina's death. I mean... they were here, but I didn't really see anyone. Not then." That time is still all a jumble in her mind, only fragments she would sometimes sort through fruitlessly.

She can remember being held, but not who by. Flashes of red hair and pale skin that she assumes meant her family. She can remember being unable to breathe, so vividly sometimes that it crushed her again. Snow, but not feeling cold. Blood welling from her, but not the pain. And somehow, in one long clear stream, the entirety of the sunrise as it slowly turned Cade's hair to gold.

Despite the peace of it in description, for whatever reason that one was painful too.

Aaand she doesn't know where she is again, but a quick glance around says they've turned toward the tower's garden.

"Um... would a walk in the garden be all right, then?"