CLOSED | i'm not one to ever pray for mercy

[aestivation]

WHO: Gwen, Adalia + Guilfoyle & Mystery Guest
WHAT: Gathering a rare herb.
WHEN: Some time this month, handwavily.
WHERE: The Nadashin Marshes.
NOTES: n/a

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VILLAGERS | single or multiple i'm not your boss

[aestivation]

It’s slow going.

Through the muck and patches of trees, patches of fog, past stilted shacks and wary eyes.

Elves are rare, regarded with caution (even unmarked Dalish sometimes range west). Open spellcraft draws open hostility; one woman makes a sign across her chest to see Alan pass.

The Chantry sister who tends these scattered villages is away several days’ journey, and the world has gone with her. Those with enough Trade to be understood — or enough patience to try their peculiar dialect of Orlesian on foreign ears — ask of the cities, the war. This, they insist, is not the Empire.

(A deserter or two have ventured this far to vanish again. Strangers are only welcome so long.)

The Inquisition brings confusion, and talk of the Herald, of her worship as a god. Is it truth? Heresy? Theirs is a devotion made fierce for its isolation, but it strays, warps.

The herb brings — eventually — an old man with an axe. His accent's difficult to place: Uses the clear, unhurried speech of someone who expects to be heard. Possibly that’s the axe. His face is a vicious ribbon of scars, thin as the point of a very fine knife.

He doesn’t require an introduction. He doesn’t want trouble. And if they agree to leave quietly, he’ll show them how to wring something useful from these roots.

[elegiaque]

Guilfoyle is a man of few words, most days; he has been a man of few words this trip, speaking briefly when spoken to and when necessary, offering his guidance where prudent but fading—habitually, it had been quickly evident—into the quiet background of most moments.

So it's unusual that he doesn't fade back a step and let the little ones tumbling across the Orlesian countryside ahead of him handle this old man and his axe on their own, a shadow whose interest in Gwenaëlle's safety has been both obvious and obviously paramount. His coat hangs to show where his weapons are, and how far from them his hands, and he says,

“I trust you've no desire for our return,” which is so mild it cannot possibly be but a warning.

He wouldn't mislead them, would he. Because Felix would hate to have to come back and drag him arse-first out of retirement.

[aestivation]

Elouan’s frown is slight, temperate. Even here, certain graces are required, for old friends and new.

"A long journey." To purpose. He hasn't gone this far to be found. His grip on the axe shifts — "Your knees, this weather."

— Loosens. Hasn’t gone this far looking to go out like that. If word of him makes its way back to court, it will see him some days gone. A gesture to follow, over sodden ground, past ladders grown slick with damp.

He moves little like a younger man, but there's the shadow of it in each tired step, over to one of the few dwellings left at ground level.

Nothing in here can be a permanent installation. Gwenaelle's offered a hammock, but he keeps conspicuous distance, won't press the issue if she protests. The others are allowed close, about a worktable as scored as its owner. He gestures to them before proceeding: Which of them need showing?

(Felix is capable, and elves are so often promising poisoners. But the boy isn't someone he imagines trusting measurements to.)

[thunderproof]

Adalia steps forward, unthinking, curious and eager to learn. This is all so very cloak-and-dagger for some plants, everyone thinking so many things they're not saying — whatever, who cares. There's something to be taught, and she's always eager to learn, so she crosses her arms and leans forward, tapping the tip of her boot against the floor as she waits.

[aestivation]

Elouan's brows lift up at the tapping, a touch of life returned to grim features. Easier to imagine now, how once they might have puppeted into place over an amusing joke, a private indulgence.

He brushes dust from the root, strips free the offshoots to place aside, in a jar steeped with swampwater. The roots are gnarled things, twisted as the years they've grown around. He lines them up neatly, precise,

And brings the axe down with jarring force.

"Important," He drawls, stepping aside so that she might see better. That it puts his back to the wall is surely coincidence. "To miss one’s fingers."

Great force is — apparently — required to chop it; if the skin isn’t soaked first (a matter of weeks in similar waters to these) they’ll have a blunted blade at best. Preservation is a delicate process of boiling, pickling, dilution. Additives, each requiring their own preparation. If it all seems a complicated dance to be done over a firepit in bumfuck nowhere, well.

There’s a reason this isn’t common knowledge.

"You understand," At last, when it’s settling, when he’s certain she's caught the important bits. When there’s a different vial in his hand, one that needn’t sit and wait some months ahead. "What this does?"

He isn’t asking Guilfoyle. His eyes find Adalia's, and don't so much linger as settle into place. He can wait all day.