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WHO: Cole & Several (includes OPEN THREAD for Rifters)
WHAT: Compassion returns to Skyhold.
WHEN: Early-Mid Haring
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Cole works best with individualized threads rather than completely open ones. Please don't be afraid to contact me (Plurk or PM) if you'd like to set something up! Prompts will be posted in comments.

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Galadriel was very skilled in both the opening of thoughts and the obfuscation of them, it was an art she excelled at above any living being in Middle Earth, and perhaps even in Aman. There were precious few who could touch her mind, fewer still who could manage it without invitation, but Thedas was strange, it seemed, and she was not so fortified here as she was accustomed to. Had his glimpse been more banal he might've gone unnoticed; that fact alone should have been horrifying, and yet it was not.

It was an inexplicable feeling, being listened to as he was listening to her; it was quiet and very nearly cold, like the barest draft rising against her heart. She was uncertain how he had found a way in but, given the feel of him, she could conjure no ire at the brush of thought.

"Alas no, though I would that we shared such things with our tree-born neighbors," Galadriel lamented, but without the bite of true grief. "The Eldar change very little once we are grown, though some of the very oldest occasionally grow beards."

She regarded him with a reflection of his curiosity.

"I have not, however, so I cannot say whether it is truly a thing that takes with age, or if it is a falsehood Cirdan has spun for us all."

Her pause was brief enough to be polite, but only just; it was fortunate she had never managed to offend one of the maiar with eager questions. True, it had been two ages since she had asked one a question so abruptly but, if anything was unchanging, it was the ways of ageless beings.

"I exhausted myself so easily reading into the hearts of men, does this world not strain against you?"

"No," he says at first, but then. Well. "Sometimes." Only not in the way she meant, he thinks.

"Sometimes the world becomes too much. Sharp and glittering. I strain to see it. That's only in places when the Veil is thin. Then I can hear the spirits on the other side, see them shimmering. Blinding. But I breathe, and try to remember what's real."

Back to the what she was actually asking about, though: "Hearts are easy to hear. Some more than others."

Galadriel was accustomed to insight without context but she had rarely encountered insight so...specific. Under other circumstances, she would have stayed silent and held Cole's account in her mind, something to piece together privately when she was not engaged in conversation, but her circumstances grew less and less normal as the days trickled by. That he could hear hearts easily was, somehow, not surprising...but that knowledge only held her interest for a moment.

Thus far she had only spoken to mages about the veil. Their answers had been helpful to her, at least in understanding magic as a concept, but they were ultimately...lacking. Each was only a partial description, and she hadn't yet learned enough to understand how this world fit together. She was not aware of just how unique Cole truly was, but she had known enough similar beings to appreciate their perspective and wisdom. To see the world from the outside was a truly rare feat, one she had not yet managed in Thedas, but Cole's account came near enough....

"I have never known a Veil before coming here," Galadriel admitted. "But I can almost feel it, like heavy clouds overhead or fog. It is very strange to me."

It was a testament to how comfortable she felt, that she was so free with her words so soon after meeting him. She nearly asked how he tolerated the Veil, if there was some secret to it, to reaching through it or around it, but she stopped herself. It was knowledge Cole might have, true, and knowledge that he might share if she pressed him, but she did not desire to cause him distress. He had simply come to check on her well-being; it was an act of kindness and one she would not repay with discomfort.

If nothing else, his account had sounded rather uncomfortable.

"I suppose it is fitting, given how strange I am to the people here," Galadriel said, a polite redirection. "My heart is not so easily read, or at least it was not in Arda, but if you must listen to it, I ask you: do not delve too deeply. I have seen much darkness that has no kin in Thedas; I would not inflict such shadows, even in memory, on those who need not know them."

He could delve very deep, if he wished. The life behind her was cavernous; most things within it were so distant and echoing that he could not hear them clearly. Only the recent past made itself readily known, and even that was longer than many ever lived.

But he would heed her advice. So long as those same shadows didn't come seeking him. They did that, sometimes.

"You give the light to banish shadows," he observed, "but to banish means to touch, and push against the darkness."

On the subject of the Veil: "There are places where the clouds part. Have you found them yet?"

"I have not," she admitted. His observation regarding her was not wrong, in another time she might've taken it as a compliment, but she was too old and his comment too precise. Yes, the sentiment was encouraging, but it also carried one of her deepest fears.

She did not comment on his words and, instead, chose to ask about the veil.

"But I shall keep an eye turned skyward," she assured him. "Can you tell me what I might look for? I have made a pasttime of...watching would be the best word, I suppose. Of watching the ripples in the veil, where I can. If I know the signs, I might find such a place more easily."

That, he could easily explain. His hand raised above the battlements, toward the sky: to the place where the Breach used to be, used to hang over Skyhold and the whole of Thedas.

"The Breach was the biggest, but it was too big. Most places are finer, filtered. Sunlight through the clouds. Glittering, but not blinding. Watch, and you will be able to see them... I think."

Galadriel followed the line of his hand and, for a long moment, stared at the scar in the sky. She had seen it when she arrived, looming over Haven, but even if someone had told her what it was, she wouldn't have understood. To know that it was a warp in the veil, a thin place, was far more interesting than it ought to have been.

"I hope I will," Galadriel told him and turned her gaze back to him. It faltered, tried to pass across the surface of him, but she stilled and was able to focus upon him again.

"This world is beautiful and it has been so long since I have seen so many new things."

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