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

tw: drowning mentions

[foxsays]

"You've witnessed it." That should be a question, it's giving herself away to not make it a question but already she's tired and frustrated with them before having to go argue on their behalf for their skins. Sour in her mouth worse than a night of drinking but she has to say it.

They can have a place here if all of them can find it, but that's the problem: too many who want to demand that they carve the space themselves in a world not theirs, that Thedas fit itself around them, and not they who should shape themselves to Thedas. If she could go back, how differently she would have done it. Stayed quiet, crept amongst them, learnt what an Antivan was and that the natives were marked same as her (impossible, and she knows how impossible it is but there are times to lie in the dark with Korrin breathing beside her, Lux at her feet, with the life she has and might have yet stretching out before her that invites her to play pretend) to say hello, I was too close, I was hurt, my father is a sailor and brought me to the port and could bring me no further.

(Martel would have approved of such deception. He took far more interested when she grew up and saw the way the winds were blowing and aligned her fates to the Inquisition, to all there was for her.)

"They're selfish enough I want to drown them," said in the gasped laugh of someone who nearly slaps a hand over her mouth to chase the words back in, but doesn't. Wouldn't. "You know," he doesn't, she sniffs through her nose very sharply to remind herself that you are better than this, get some control over this, "I go to the sea and I go beneath the water until all I hear is my heart in my ears, until I think my lungs will burst. And my mind is so clear. It's never more clear. And I think it would do them some good."

(You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. You can still drag the damn thing in and watch it struggle until it no longer can and she is a very strong swimmer.)

Myrobalan's words give her time to consider her own, time to stem the tide of her ugliness, her frustrations that have risen on a cresting wave to hit the shore. Swallowing hurts, but sometimes it has to hurt, and the salt in her mouth is the sweat that clouded everything when the plague stole all of her away (again). "The spirits must have echoed us," sounding the idea out the way she'd said to Thranduil as a girl who learnt lessons before knowing, "from where they saw us - how far does the Fade extend, though it's dreaming, it must keep going, no? - and then the rest came. The part you're talking about now. Where the Maker has come in?"

It's not so difficult for her, beloved of the sea, child of a holy man and holy woman to talk of that part at least. That something else flows through them although lyrium burnt through her once by way of uncaring hands, her memories not her own, cold and dark, the box locked tight, the thumb rubbed until the joint eventually pops. Still, she sighs, imagining some people with it. "Not everyone would want to know the Maker's gaze is upon them. Speaking of rifters. Can you imagine the caterwauling?"