when you've gone about things all wrong,

[faithlikeaseed]

WHO: Myr + YOU! (With starters for Herian, Vandelin, and Newt.)
WHAT: Bees, glyphs, knight-enchanting, just plain Chant(ing), and other things relevant to Myr's interests
WHEN: Early to mid-Solace
WHERE: All around the Gallows & Kirkwall
NOTES: Will be added as needed!

i. when the day begins to break // the Gallows courtyard

With the height of Kirkwall's summer cresting hot and muggy, Myr's made even more effort to confine his conditioning to the early morning hours. He's up and out before dawn to run laps of the prayer garden (much smaller than the courtyard, but fewer people there and the obstacles don't change day to day); after that, staff-sparring or grappling with whoever might be about, or barring a live opponent, a session with one of the dummies.

Then, magic: Today, he bends all his focus to a knight-enchanter's disruption field, throwing a rippling bubble of slowed time over a secluded corner of the courtyard. A footstep overheard, a voice--at the sound of someone approaching he'll toss a sunny smile their way, and a request: "If you've got a moment, d'you mind stepping inside there? Promise it's harmless; you'll just slow down a bit."

ii. in the things & the way they could have been // the library

Thursday evening, Chant discussion group. In light of recent concerns over the rifters, Myr'd opened the floor to talk of spirits--something he'd never have done on his own, uncomfortable as he is on the subject, if it hadn't felt like an inspired necessity. Tonight's discussion lingered long over Senior Enchanter Baden's treatise, with particular attention to how mankind's darkest desires intertwined with with the spirits' needs to lead them both into destruction. Not an easy topic to cover, not by a long shot, but--there was no true acrimony behind any of the arguing and no one had stomped off in a huff this time, so it went well enough.

Thus it's with a quiet sense of relief that he lingers as the rest of the group files out; he's usually the last to go, since it's his pledge to the archivists that gets them the study room every week and they expect the door locked when it's not in use. But today especially he needs a little bit of extra time to process what's been said and tuck it away--

Though he'll not be averse to anyone who wants to talk a little more privately on anything that came up in discussion.

iii. don't forget son when he's out on his own // Kirkwall alienage

Like many city elves born to the alienages, Myr's no precise idea when his nameday falls in the year. "Mid-Solace" is the closest he remembered from the little celebrations his father and Ben threw for him; he'd chosen the fifteenth himself much later out of a love of symmetry. (That it happened to coincide with the nameday of the comely Imayn--whose eye he'd been striving to catch at the time--was a nice bonus.) It had since stuck there, celebrated informally in Hasmal's Circle right up to the year of the rebellion.

After that--

After that he hadn't felt much like celebrating another year's survival, nor had anyone else. It still feels a little wrong to do so, even though the Inquisition's been a boon in other ways--but it is his thirtieth and that requires something to mark it.

He brings honeycomb and wildflowers to offer at the vhenadahl, that little bit of paganry even his father embraced. (The Maker, Iolan had said, had made the People as they were and given them to the lives they now led; He would not begrudge them their traditions, so long as it drew their hearts back to Him in the end.) He kneels at the foot of the great tree to make his gift of them; remains there, after, in quiet prayer to the Maker and His Bride, asking guidance for the coming year.

And then, as quietly: "I hope you can hear me, Dad. I know the Chantry says otherwise--but you'd always believed the Maker kinder than that, and I want to, too."

iv. wildcard

(Surprise me! Or hit me up on Plurk or Discord if you'd like a specific starter.)

Comments

i write you in this letter that states scratched through // Vandelin

[faithlikeaseed]

They'd been talking on and off about writing home, exploring the idea in careful steps together now that they could. Not that it had been forbidden, precisely, back in the Circle--but it was no secret all correspondence between mages and their families was read. And after one letter in particular had given the Circle's leadership ammunition to keep the two of them in line--

Or maybe it was collective heartbreak over Iolan's death, and having no one else to write to who wasn't solidly under Vardren's thumb, but either way it had come about they'd stopped sending their letters home. Hadn't stopped writing them, though, not for a long time, which is why the stack of yellowing folded parchment Myr's brought with him to Vandelin's door is so thick; it's not only his own unsent letters, but everything he could rescue from his cousin's quarters as well before they were taken apart by the rest of Hasmal's loyalists. (Would that he could have saved more, though his own anger wouldn't let him at the time.)

He knocks on Van's door--listens a moment--then lets himself into his cousin's quarters. "I hope," he says cheerily, "you really did get snacks because I expect we'll be a while about this. Here," he digs the packet of correspondence out of his satchel and offers it Van's direction, "this is for you to go through, first."

[misdirection_hex]

"Of course I have snacks," says Van, sounding faintly offended (he isn't really, not truly, but of course he got snacks. Northern snacks, all grease and cheap protein and too much seasoning, a taste of home to match what they're dwelling on.)

He stands aside to let Myr make himself at home, the neatly-made bed piled with pillows to get comfortable among, and takes the offered stack of letters. It surprises him with its heft. He narrows his eyes, momentarily uncomprehending, as he flips through the addresses and dates, the words in his own hand to friends and lovers he'd never even told Myr about--

"You went and found these?"

[faithlikeaseed]

Seeing as how it’s Van’s quarters and there’s no standing on formality with family, Myr makes a beeline for the bed. (It’s also less likely to have moved than any of Van’s chairs.) He settles on the edge long enough to shed his boots and set his staff in reach before tucking his feet under him in a position that looks thoroughly uncomfortable (and isn’t). Some things don’t change.

Other things do—like the way Myr hesitates before replying a question that needs only a self-evident “yes, of course I would, I always would.” He had gone and found them but what Van’s really asking is why—and why hurts a little, still.

“They could still be delivered, I thought,” he says finally, quietly. “And even if I was angry at you it didn’t mean I didn’t want—something to remember you by. They’re my history, too—some of them.”

[misdirection_hex]

Something to remember you by. Vandelin couldn't articulate what breaks his heart about that phrasing and the implications thereof. The idea, perhaps, that Myr would have wanted to remember him even after months of agonizing convalescence in a tower full of people who considered Van the ultimate traitor--that Myr would have braved his quarters without the benefit of sight, searched them painstakingly by touch alone, found letters that could have no value to him but the sentimental when he couldn't read them anymore, and done it for the sake of having a souvenir of the cousin he never expected to meet again.

No wonder Myr had called Van's flight 'abandonment,' when Van had taken no such memento of him, nothing to remind him of the all-but-brother he was leaving behind.

"Some of them," he echoes, trying to regain his train of thought. "It's true. Here's one we got halfway through together...looks like it was to Ben."

[faithlikeaseed]

Today, now, nearly four years after the fact--Myr can make it seem to himself to be so uncomplicated and sweet as that. (Because damn it, even if it wasn't, it should have been; it is the person he wants to be, beyond the blackness that ate away his heart in those days spent on his back under Sestina's care.) But it isn't divorced from the truth to say so--he wouldn't, otherwise--simply drained of those things he still can't consider straight on.

Someday, with time, maybe-- When it isn't a matter of emotional survival to cling to the blood family he has here and now (though when will it ever be?), when he can think about those things without flinching and wondering if he's the less for them.

Maybe never.

"How old is it? Think there's anything in there worth saving?" He's picked up a pillow for want of something to do with his hands--no sense in getting up and pacing when he just got comfortable--and feels for the seams as he talks. "I'd this idea we could compile everything we'd meant to say--abridge it some--and send all that so they know we were--so they don't have to imagine any longer what'd happened to us."

Though that might make for far too much letter; Ben'd learned to read but was always a little slower about it than most. No telling what Niana and Linise might've learned growing up.

[misdirection_hex]

"That would be a great idea," says Van, lips twitching, "if we were still apprentices. At this point, we'd have to write them a novel."

Which isn't the worst of ideas. Novels can be well-edited, and Van doesn't doubt--though the certainty makes his conscience twinge--that Myr will allow whatever abridged history they compile to be more charitable than Van probably deserves.

Niana could probably read the novel, besides. The Elris children had been among the most fortunate in the alienage, last Van saw of it, and they'd all been painstakingly taught their letters with the least moth-eaten copy of the Chant anyone could find.

"It wouldn't be impossible. We start with the important business--we're both alive and reasonably well, aiding the Inquisition in Kirkwall--and then I suppose we toss in whatever background feels right."

[faithlikeaseed]

"Well, and what's wrong with writing a novel?" Myr retorts, grinning. He knows it wasn't the best idea to begin with--but in his usual fashion, and since it's Van, he's going to stick with the thought until they've beaten it to death. (Even better that Van's not exactly turning him down this time around.) "We've lived suitably colorful lives and there's enough out there who don't know what a Circle's like we could sell it on novelty and mystique alone. Maybe send it as a series of letters and then your sisters could publish it as a serial--the tell-all memoire of two elven mages."

This is absolutely ridiculous and wouldn't work so easily as that and by his tone and expression he knows it--but he's on a roll and there's no stopping him until he's played the scenario out in full. "It's got all the good bits--romance, intrigue," tragedy, "and Circle politics. People would eat it up."

Which is honestly sufficient reason in his mind not to do it, but it's a fun idea to talk about even so.

[misdirection_hex]

"They'd have to reserve your sections for the Randy Dowager," Van retorts, with an audible grin in his voice. "Not quite the kind of account we want to be sending to family, but the rest of it would be good. Lots of knight-enchanter derring-do from you, backstabbing faculty intrigue from me..."

It's sufficient reason to avoid the idea for Van as well, for probably quite the opposite reason. The last thing he ought to want is for people to think Circles were fun or interesting enough to bring back just as they were. But he won't say as much, though he's sure Myr knows he's thinking it.

"It's strange," he muses, more subdued. "To think we're all but making a first impression on our own parents and siblings here."

[faithlikeaseed]

His exploits in the Dowager? Myr snorts at the thought. "I hate to say it," because he's got a self-image to maintain here, albeit very much in jest, "but nothing I ever did would be exciting enough for the Dowager without embellishment. Unless you count that one time on the roof--which sends entirely the wrong message about magic."

Not to mention it might get a venturesome reader or two killed attempting it. That thought--to say nothing of his knowing very well exactly how excited Van would really be to turn out a glamorized description of Circle life--is enough to dim Myr's smile a fraction and entirely squelch his enthusiasm for the project. "Besides, I don't know I could live down having that one read back to me. So we'll keep it family-friendly."

For the parts of the family worth writing to, at least; his smile dims further and he picks at the pillow on his lap. "It is. D'you think--no, they've got to remember us," we remember them, two decades isn't that long a separation. "--But I wonder if they'll not prefer the memories over the strangers we are now. Kids aren't complicated and can't tell them what we were sent off to." Good or bad; though it presupposes parents who'd be wounded by the idea they'd handed their children over to be placed in the wyvern's jaws.

Which were in unfortunate short supply among the Elrises.

[misdirection_hex]

"It's not that I think they won't remember us, it's--that. Exactly that." As short in supply as sympathy might be among Van's immediate kin, it's still likely better than the 50-50 split between Shivanas who'll want to hear from Myr and Shivanas who would sooner pretend he'd never been born.

Or is it? More siblings raised in the strictest of Orlesian Chantry tradition only provide more chances for scathing rejection, if any reply comes at all. Surely even Niana, who had once loved him so fiercely, must have little remaining attachment after nearly a quarter-age's separation.

"Is it worth trying, do you think?"

[faithlikeaseed]

How well he knows the contours of his cousin's heart--some of them, anyway; not quite enough to expect that exact question, said exactly that way, but Myr know something like it was coming. He sets aside the pillow and his own qualms, takes a breath, and offers his verdict: "Yeah.

"They're still family. Your sisters and Ben, at least, until they choose otherwise. We've got to give them that chance." And while he hopes dearly Ben won't have changed so much he'd turn them both aside for being mages--it's been more than two decades.

People can lose the light they once had.

[misdirection_hex]

Do we? Everything in Vandelin's compulsive need for control rebels against the thought, the idea of allowing for a choice he can't predict and making himself vulnerable thereby. The thought sets his nerves on edge like a screeching sound.

But the potential promise here is taking up valiant arms against that fear. They're still family. Family who will never know him so well as Myr does, or vice-versa, but family he still aches to know, probing at the hollow of his sisters' absence like a missing tooth and wondering who they grew up to be. He has only the barest snatches to go on when speculating about their reactions to being contacted by their war-apostate relatives, but...Niana had always snuck out with him to visit the Shivanas, defied their parents' commands with equal audacity, asked questions about the Chant that made their father's face blanch. Linise had screamed when the templars came for him, trailing no no no behind him as they'd carried him off. Slim hope, all of it, but hope nonetheless.

"They'll all think we've put on terrible airs," he muses. "The way we write and talk. And you know Hasmal's about as far from keen on the Inquisition as it gets."