faderift | I couldn't hide from the thunder in a sky full of song.

WHO: Ilse Althaus + You
WHAT: Ilse arriving in Kirkwall and settling herself in, as much as she ever settles.
WHEN: The last week of Justinian
WHERE: Around the Gallows, mostly.
NOTES: Mentions/references to starvation, nudity due to the baths, hating the rich, etc. If I've forgotten any, please let me know!

I. The Gallows - Training Grounds

After making her way to Kirkwall and pledging herself to the Inquisition’s cause, Ilse’s first stop is to hunt for the armory and the training grounds. She spends several minutes inspecting the available weapons, plucking several arrows for practice for herself along the way.

Then she makes her way to the open areas obviously set aside for training. Covered in dirt, hungry, and not yet changed from her long journey here, before anything else, Ilse takes care to sate her hunger for keeping her instincts and mind sharp.

She lets the arrows fly, picturing each target as the Darkspawn that have taken so much from her. That, or the useless nobility with all of their pretty lies and posturing while people die around them. Her expression is one of concentration, but if one looks closely, one might just catch a glimpse of the vulnerability Ilse tries so hard to keep concealed.

II. The Gallows – Communal Baths

Ilse loses herself to her archery practice. Hours pass her by before she notices; by the time she pulls herself out of the trance she’s fallen into, the sun has begun to set; the air has tempered with incoming evening.

Her stomach grumbles, but she ignores it for now. She’s gotten rather good at ignoring its demands over the years, after all.

She makes her way to the baths, shedding her clothes, sticky and hot with sweat, dust, and muck, as she makes her way to the water. She might be a devout Andrastian, but the excessive modesty preached by the Chantry has never been a luxury she could indulge, not in her life, and the events she’s lived through, at any rate.

The water is cold, which makes her smile, a rare sight to behold when she isn’t around cats or indulging in her habit of less than reputable novels. She much prefers the cold water; too much of her life is defined by hot.

She hears the telltale sounds of someone else joining her. Before she settles completely into one of the few luxuries she does allow herself, Ilse arches an eyebrow and twists to catch a glance at who might be joining her.

III. The Gallows – One of the smaller chapels

Ilse finally washes up and grabs herself a quick but hearty meal, the best she’s eaten since…well, she can’t remember when. But the point is, it was delicious and sustaining.

Truthfully, she should have made her way to the chapel first, to offer prayers of thanks for making it to Kirkwall safely. Given the overall world state of Thedas, and all of the dangers she’s encountered on her journey to this Inquisition outpost, she knows she owes a good deal of gratitude to Andraste for guiding her here.

The chapel is simply decorated, which also helps to put Ilse at ease. She prefers these simple affairs as opposed to the grander chapels with all their ornate decorations; so much indulgence that could have, instead, gone to help the poor, as the Chantry is supposed to do.

But that is a thought better put aside for the moment.

Ilse falls to her knees and begins to pray, murmuring quietly her favorite of the prayers her father taught her. Out of the corners of her eyes, even cast as they are humbly at the floor, she can catch the silver sparkle of the stars in the night sky. The stars she likes to think her father sent to guide her.

IV. Wildcard. Have a specific prompt you'd like for Ilse and your character? Let me know through plurk or PM and I'll be happy to write a specific starter!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The evening prayers are Myr's favorite: A final opportunity for communion with the Maker and His Bride before sleep; a chance to recollect the day, touched with gratitude instead of morning's beseeching. Of course, given his sometimes-erratic sleep schedule they're not always evening prayers--but he's been trying very hard lately to be awake with the rest of the Gallows.

Thus he's come to the chapel not long after sundown and Ilse's arrival, pausing on the door's threshold at the sound of an unfamiliar voice entreating Andraste. He's nothing against praying in company, though--even the company of strangers; after all, they're all one body in the Maker--and so continues into the nave after a moment's pause, staff ticking on the stone floor. A year's familiarity lets him navigate the space nearly as well as if he were sighted; he knows how many can kneel before the altar, and exactly how much room to give Ilse as he takes a place beside her.

No mistaking him for anything but a mage: He's still in his work robes, to say nothing of the staff he lays down beside him before clasping his hands before him and adding his voice to hers.

Ilse has her eyes closed and her head bowed as she prays, habits borne from her years of devotion. She tries not to think too hard on Dietrich and the lack of correspondence with him ever since she informed him she was making her way to sign up with the Inquisition. Still, she includes him in her prayers, all the same. He's really the only family she knows she still has, now; she doesn't know whether her mother and her husband are still alive, after all. She prays for them too.

She isn't the sort to throw herself into a meditative state when praying; indeed, given her experiences, she can't afford to be. She recognizes the sound of what it is either a walking stick or staff approaching where she kneels.

She tenses automatically, ready for a fight, if need be. It wouldn't be the first time she'd spilled blood on holy ground.

She waits and she watches as the man joins her, taking note immediately of the staff he places down and his robes. Ugh, a mage. Great.

It's as she's glancing up that she notices his ears. She can't help but stare, then. An...Andrastian elf mage? They exist?

She only just then realizes that her own prayers have tapered off into silence as she continues to stare. Ilse clears her throat.

"I apologize if I'm intruding on your usual prayer time," she manages, still staring. She's trying desperately to wrap her mind around what she's seeing.

Not only do they exist, but Myr's only the most recent one to join the Inquisition--

But that's, perhaps, a story for another time.

He's not unaccustomed to people leaving off their activities (and, presumably, staring) when he enters a room; it's happened often enough by now that he's at some kind of peace with it. (It's easier in the chapel, in the Lady's presence. Easier to balance earthly trials against what really matters.) So when Ilse goes silent, he does at well, as if in anticipation of the comment to come--because that's what often follows the staring, especially from newcomers to the Inquisition.

"Not intruding at all; besides, it's Our Lady's space, not mine," he replies to her, with a smile. "I'd be churlish to object to someone at her prayers. I hope I've not disturbed you, by turns."

Ilse can't stop staring, and not just for the obvious reasons. Lately, she's encountered more people questioning their faith than not (and, in fairness to them, how can they not, when the world seems to be going to shit around them), and so she's a bit taken aback, too, by the man's gentle tones and outright admission of faith.

"I suppose you are right, serah," she says with a nod and a brief bow of her head. "And you have not, I assure you."

She should probably stop staring. "I admit," she says, bluntly as ever, "I do not often come across elf mages who believe in the Maker."

She doesn't come across elves in general outside of alienages and servants' quarters, but she has enough tact to keep that to herself, at least.

Certainly, in the light of everything that's happened in the past four years--Corypheus, the wars, the Divine's death not least of all--it was easier to give up on faith than cling to it. The Maker had already turned His back on the world, so the Chant said; what use was it appealing to Him any longer as things got steadily worse?

But there are some that hold on, still, and it's a little bit of balm to Myr's soul to know that another of them has joined the Inquisition.

Blunt though the question might be, it gets even more of a smile out of him--albeit a rueful one. "Some would say that's because we've double the reason not to." Take, for instance, his cousin, beloved and frustratingly agnostic to the core--though even if Vandelin weren't a mage or an elf, Myr's no doubt that growing up under someone like Uncle Vardren would've been sufficient to drive the native faith out of anyone.

"And I don't begrudge them that; there's been real harm done to both groups in the Maker's name. But He Made us too--and no matter what evil His other children might invent, they can't take that fact away from us."

I couldn't hide from the thunder in a sky full of song.

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