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Entry tags:
OPEN | We don’t have to fall from grace
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.
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.
no subject
The war isn't over, as Kostos has been so very quick and harsh to remind him, and he doesn't know how it will end. He doesn't know anymore how he wants it to.
But he arrives at the appointed time, just a couple minutes late--he's taken the time to change out of his armor, when otherwise he might not have. His gaze is just as wary as he scans Colin's face, but the lemonade is more than welcome after a warm day in full plate, and he arranges his bulk as neatly as he can at the small table.
"You've been well, I hope."
no subject
He garnishes Simon's lemonade with a sprig of mint before pouring his own. He wants Simon to know this isn't a confrontation. Some people scoff at the act of buttering people up, but it serves an important function in society. It makes people feel safe and welcome, and it begins negotiation. And discussion. The sharing of stories. It helps repair friendships. Hopefully. Now that Simon is here, Colin has a quiet feeling that it's all going to be okay. The hard part was making the decision and getting him here. Everything else is just words.
no subject
The tension in his shoulders relaxes visibly as he accepts the lemonade with a quiet murmur of thanks. It does have precisely the desired effect. He knows it's a peace offering, and he wants to deserve it.
"Well enough," he says. "Maker, this lemonade is good stuff. Couldn't expect otherwise, from you."
no subject
"Until we understand where we both stand, I don't think it's possible to be friends. But it's worth trying to be friends. It's worth it for mages and templars to have conversations about what happened, what we did, and why we did it. Some people...some mages I know want to paint all templars with the blood only some of them took. And maybe I've been one of them. For a while it was vital for my own survival to believe all templars would choose to shelter their own instead of sheltering their charges, and I shouldn't trust them. But it's not vital to my survival anymore to think that way. It's more vital to...talk. To the ones who've been fair to me. So that I can be fair to you in turn."
He meets Simon's eyes.
"I want to know your story. And if you want, I'll tell you mine."
He doesn't mention Compassion. He doesn't want Simon to think this is just an obligatory gesture Colin is getting over with. He needs Simon to be okay with this. His own line of reasoning is one he came to as a way to break through the barrier of strong avoidant feelings he has always been controlled by. Of course he knows it's possibly bullshit, and definitely incredibly risky, but it's the only way forward with this. Believing templars and mages can communicate is the only way he can give Simon a chance.
no subject
But Colin clearly isn't done, and Simon makes himself listen without comment or interruption or stubbornness. It's never failed to prove worth his while here to make himself swallow his pride and hear out a mage. He'd never have known Fern or Myr otherwise, and he wouldn't give up either of those relationships now for the world.
It's something--more than something--to hear that Colin thinks he's been one of the fair ones. He wouldn't, though, his conscience hisses, if he knew. Tell him what he's asking for and you'll only prove him right about everything he believes.
"I want to know yours," he begins, hesitant and grudging, "but--"
How else is he meant to make amends for his criminal silence? What other kind of justice is left to any mage or templar who seeks it now?
"You won't think half so well of me when you've heard it. But you deserve to know."
no subject
"You won't shock me," he says. "I'm from Kinloch Hold. I've seen everything."
A light tone it is, a way of breaking the tension with an assurance that he doesn't necessarily feel is true, but doesn't necessarily feel is untrue. He saw the Circle overtaken by blood mages. He saw possessed templars get cut down through a crack in a wall. He saw some apprentices rise like stars while others muddled through. He saw a former friend in Tranquil robes. He saw much of Lake Calenhad from the top of the tower. He saw a despair demon freeze, then shatter. He saw death. He saw three possible outcomes when Ser Lutair unbuckled his belt. He saw Audra walk away.
no subject
But Kinloch Hold hadn't started a war.
"That may be so, friend, and I'm sorry for it," he says, "but you weren't in the Gallows when Meredith Stannard ruled over it. I was." Slowly, he exhales.
"It was my first posting, soon as I finished training and came of age. I wasn't one of the lads who'd been promised from birth or raised to it as orphans; I wanted it more than anything. I had to beg my ma and da to let me train. They're not the most pious of folk and they'd rather I have stayed and helped my brother in the forge--they're smiths by trade."
'They,' not 'we.' He hasn't thought of his family as a 'we' for as long as he can remember.
no subject
"Do you still see them?" he asks. If the Blight hadn't hit Ferelden, Colin still has no idea whether he'd be welcomed back by his family, and he hadn't chosen to leave. Some parents might be understanding of a mage who was taken away, but a templar who walked away?