OPEN | We don’t have to fall from grace

[keenly]

WHO: Colin, with a few closed starters for Nathaniel
WHAT: Open/catch-all log for May
WHEN: Bloomingtide
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Starters inside. Let me know if you want something.

General Store

Colin has come to love this place. After six months here, it has come to smell like cloves and cedarwood. All the spices he uses in cooking have seasoned the wood panels. It really feels like it belongs to him now, even if the property belongs to the Inquisition courtesy of the City of Kirkwall.

At the moment, he is baking rather than cooking, this time more for therapy than anything else. There is something meditative about kneading dough. It's impossible not to slow down when doing this, be in the moment, stop worrying. A simple life is all he ever wanted, and that's what making bread means. It is a staple--easy and simple to make but vital to the function of one's house and therefore empowering. This is important work.

Gallows Garden

In one of the gardens, Colin sits on a patch of grass with his face turned upward toward the sun, eyes shut. He breathes deeply and evenly, and neither peeks nor starts when footsteps are heard. He knows you're there, but he's not thinking about you. He's emptying his mind. Somehow, the feel of sunlight works like a mantra, a white noise he can feel. His mother would say it's the Antivan in him that makes him love sunlight. Colin thinks it's the mage in him. For ten years, he wasn't allowed very much sunlight. Now, he can have his fill of it. He can hoard it all greedily and no one will know the difference. No one has the right to stop him or demand for him to justify this indulgence, or ask who said he could spend so much time sitting and doing nothing in the sunlight.

So his brown skin gets browner by the day, dark hair developing faint caramel highlights, but most importantly, some of his nervous mannerisms are being smoothed out. He can be seen leaving the garden looking, and feeling, lighter than air.

The Market

"I want the one that spit at me," Colin can be heard saying. It makes sense because he's at a clam stall. It's about five o'clock in the morning and he has just decided what lunch will be today. A merchant takes a scoop and digs through the clams. Several spit in different directions, each stream of water two or three feet long.

"You want to eat that one?" the merchant laughs, dumping clams into Colin's outstretched bag.

"Oh yes," Colin says firmly, smiling wickedly.

When all is done and paid for, Colin starts back to the Gallows. After a few paces he stops, looking at a shirt hanging at another merchant's stall. It is beautiful--bright, hand-painted silk. It is also expensive. Far less expensive are the tiny bits of jewelry at the same stall. He starts looking over a tray with numerous earrings, clearly distracted from his task. One clam gives one final, defiant spit before resigning itself to its parched fate.

Darktown Clinic

Maybe you are a volunteer here. Maybe you are a patient. Either way, Colin is here after work several times a week, and he isn't just here giving out potions. Here, he practices real healing magic, as someone who barely practices magic at all otherwise. This month, Colin is giving out Adalia's rain boots to every scavenger presenting with trench foot.

Of course, Darktown's shady reputation comes from somewhere. Today, a man sidles up to Colin as he works and claps an arm around his shoulders, starting to talk about how good a man he is and how he's making a real difference. He talks loudly, and as soon as Colin knows what he's up to (and he lived in Denerim--it doesn't take long), he shoves him away.

"Don't touch me," he growls, patting down his own pockets and finding--yes. Yes, that is his purse gone. He shouldn't have brought it here.

Annnnnd the man is already running away. Colin follows as far as the door with a sigh. Using magic to stop a pickpocket seems excessive, and there wasn't that much money in there, and...sigh.

Okay. He's over it.

Comments

[keenly]

"No reason not to." Colin shrugs and starts arranging ingredients. "Making the dough goes by feel anyway. I've got jamon from Antiva here, it's a very thin-sliced dry-cured ham. Very intense, mixes well with other meats. Now, right in front of you is the flour. The shorter jar beside it is the lard. I'll get you some cold water."

There is the sound of water pouring into a cup.

[extraverse]

Ignis really appreciates the patient way that Colin explains the set up in front of him. He reaches out carefully to find the ingredients and lets his hands get used to the outline of the work station and the layout of things.

"I wonder... If I find myself in a situation where I'm able to have my own kitchen here, I should put notches on the tops of jars? Something simple I can feel to tell them apart. I won't always have you here to make sure I'm not accidentally reaching for salt when I should be using sugar." His voice is calm, and there's a note of gratefulness there, but there is something inside of him that feels a sense of loss that he can't quite put to words. It feels too private to even try.

[keenly]

"I'd put on something much clearer than notches," Colin suggests. "Cut shapes out of cork lids and put them on. A star, a circle, and the like." There's a sound resembling crackling ice as Colin partially freezes the water in the cup. "That way there's no question and you don't accidentally miscount."

[extraverse]

Ignis tilts his head at the sound but doesn't comment on it for now. He nods at the suggestion.

"I was thinking something a bit more like Braille, but from what I understand Thedas doesn't have anything like that. It's a tactile writing, little symbols that are slightly raised on the surface so that one can trail their fingers over and read."

[keenly]

"Oh." Colin sounds impressed. Little thought has been given in Thedas for the functionality of the world for the blind, at least as far as he is aware. "Well, that's one thing you can teach our world. Here, we're more inclined to, um, let people die. Which isn't how it ought to be, obviously."

He won't sugar-coat things. This is not a great place to be if you're disabled.

[extraverse]

"And yet there are those who make their way," Ignis responds. He doesn't seem to mind Colin's blunt way of speaking, there is a bit of a smile to the corner of his lips as he speaks. He is rather impressed by those who manage to make a life in this world.

"Things aren't exactly pleasant on Eos too. For one, many more than I have been forced to adapt to the dark. Here you at least have the sun, and two moons so I'm told."

[keenly]

"You...don't have a sun?" So far, this is the strongest argument Colin has heard for rifters' worlds not being real. How can a world not have a sun?

[extraverse]

Ignis pauses a moment and then nods. He had to consider how much detail he wanted to get into this with Colin. "There is a plague on our sun, called the Starscourge. Recently, it shrouded our entire world in constant darkness. Daemons are able to appear in any shadowed place on Eos, they now terrorize the people constantly. The only safe havens are settlements that use artificial light to keep them at bay. It's... rather chaotic." He knows that is a vast oversimplification but he isn't sure how else to describe what is happening.

"I was blinded before the days ended, during one of the final battles we partook in an attempt to stop it."

[keenly]

That sounds even worse than things are here. It sounds like how things will be if Corypheus wins. Which gives Colin something new to consider about the current stakes. He has always assumed people in this world are self-interested enough to fight against its destruction. Has he given them too much credit?

"You'll, um. You'll want to cut the dough with cold water." He sets the cup of icy water where Ignis can find it.

[extraverse]

"Ah, yes," Ignis replies as he touches the water cup to judge where it is in relationship to everything else. He doesn't share more about his world now, instead focusing on creating the dough for the meat pie.

He pauses only to double check that he is right in where everything is placed, but for the most part, he can double check ingredients by smell or texture. He may have joked about mixing up salt and sugar but there are plenty of ways to tell the two apart that have nothing to do with labels. It also becomes clear to Colin that he has this recipe memorized and that despite his posh exterior he has no qualms about getting his hands dirty. He mixes together the dry ingredients and then cuts in the others. He asks Colin to visually check the way the dough is shaping together every once and a while though he seems to catch on to how it feels when he mixes in bits of water until it's the right consistency.

Making a pie was probably a good choice because the experience of making the dough is so tactile. He can sense when it's coming together by using his hands and it does more to help him regain faith in his ability than he can really say.