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]

By the look on his face, Colin would probably rather pay five silver not to see that man again, but Nikos has a point. He can't throw away money, and he can't just let people steal from him and get the reputation of being an easy target. He glances back through the door of the clinic. It's a slow day. He has no excuse.

Dammit.

He descends the steps and approaches Nikos with arms folded. "All right," he sighs reluctantly. "Show me how."

[exsecutus]

It's not an excuse, but no would be a good reason to not go. If their roles were reversed, Nikos would use it as his reason, without any additional qualification.

He doesn't offer it as a possibility to Colin. Waits for him to come down the stairs, and then, with a look that is almost amused, turns away and starts off in the direction that the man had taken off.

"Have you been to many taverns here." It's a question, though it lacks the upwards inflection that most questions take on. If pressed, Nikos would wager Colin's answer as no. Given his (correct) opinion on the shit wine available for purchase. "Or what passes for taverns, in Darktown."

He means that fondly. Sort of.

[keenly]

"Once." Colin pats his pockets to make sure nothing else is in them and then walks briskly to catch up with Nikos. "When a man collapsed and needed our help. Why? Is it tradition for a thief legging it away from a mage to stop for a bite and a sup first?"

[exsecutus]

"Yes," Nikos says, deadpan, "down at the Steal and Sup."

You moron, is the subtext that his expression lends those words, but in an amused way. He wouldn't rate Colin as a friend because he doesn't have any friends. He would rate Colin as tolerable. Colin is not always a whiner, and is capable of sarcasm. Two good traits.

"A thief becomes a thief for a reason. He chooses a likely mark. An unsuspecting mage in a clinic, unlikely to retaliate for--whatever reasons." He can only guess, he means, but central to his guess would be a mage zapping someone in the street is not likely to go over well, no matter the mage's affiliation with the Inquisition or the dubious success of the mage's strike. "Motivation comes long before that. Few people wake up and decide to be a thief. It is something that happens to them. A thief robbing someone clumsily, in the open, and during the day, is likely to be desperate. So he might have debts," he points out, "or an obligation to someone else, higher up than him. Ask around and you'll find out. So, start at the taverns."

[keenly]

Colin rarely injects venom into any conversation, but the whole story about the desperate thief gets a glazey look resembling an eyeroll. Stories of thief heroes or pitiable thieves are, to him, sort of like exclaiming that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. And they encourage con men, and people like that Adasse kid who brags about being the best thief ever but oh wait he's on the side of good. Same goes for pirates and highwaymen. These are dangerous people to try to empathize with.

"A thief becomes a thief because it's convenient," he disagrees. "It's far more likely we'll find him drinking himself into a stupor than paying off a debt. Which. That still leads to the taverns."

[exsecutus]

"And it is convenient," Nikos says, "because the thief was born into a locked system that doesn't give a shit about him or the betterment of men like him. Inequality is a social phenomenon. Not the product of a man's individual choice or circumstance, beyond the circumstances thrust upon him."

Don't think for a second that Nikos' heart bleeds for anyone. His sympathy is driven by anger. Arseholes who take advantage of people are arseholes. Arseholes are made into arseholes by bigger arseholes, who are made into bigger arsholes by the bigger gold-plated arseholes that shit on everyone from above.

"Maybe when you recover your purse, you try drinking yourself into a stupor," he suggests, dryly, to Colin. "It's surprisingly pleasant."