[CLOSED] every storm we ride is its own reward

[katabasis]

WHO: Everyone on the Galicia and Walrus
WHAT: Adventure on the high seas
WHEN: The escape from Minrathous
WHERE: The Ocean
NOTES: Violence cw all but guaranteed; directed top levels are there to make life easy but feel free to make your own stuff. Don't write too much about the Archon's fate until it gets hashed out (here probably)

Comments

araceli ota

[foxsays]

day;
[Last time on a ship the ship was very much listing and scarred, an exciting trip to an uncharted island that went to shit then crawling into Llomerryn, Araceli amazed that they made it the state they'd been in. This is--

(Previous experience with the Venatori is not something to be discussed beyond a thing that happened, the worrying of her left thumb, her irritation with arguments they shouldn't have to be having.)

Work is better, so where someone is unopposed to having a smallish stranger that's where she is for much of it, someone who very much does know her business on a ship with only questions about The Walrus specifically to be asked. Also happy to generally be as high up as she can because Kirkwall not exactly noted for a bounty of nosebleed vantage points, toes curled to keep her there in the rigging.]

night;
[Night and Araceli is out on the deck because she can't sleep, too restless and uneasy for it. Keeping out of the way more than in the day where she'd been inclined to lend a hand.

The dice with her aren't for gambling if it's going on but she'd rather do something with her hands. Or blades to be sharpened. A troubling amount maybe that suggests if you had to shake her (why would you shake her?) that knives would make up half the weight of her.

But she might gamble, will definitely chat, and there's very much a flask of good rum out of her office because whoever is looking after that is probably going to drink the room dry and she wouldn't blame them really so y'know it's cold at sea at night, have at it.]

night.

[elegiaque]

( blades to be sharpened; women's own edges. gwenaëlle sits behind her in the low, flickering light and works a comb through araceli's hair while she in front works the edge of the blade, and it is and is not much like other evenings they've spent passing drink and hair-combs between them.

she doesn't know what, precisely, crawls so restless under araceli's skin—but she knows the shape of grit-teeth bravery, the brittleness of bones that have too much asked of them. she can't make it not so, can't offer any assurances but her own steadiness.

and it's strange to do. to have it to offer. but every girl needs a girl, sometimes. they can't sit here holding hands in the darkness, but they can sharpen their blades, and fix their braids, and she can hope it means something. )

I'm going to join your project when we get back.

( a beat. )

If that's all right.

( she wouldn't tack that last part on for just anyone. )

[foxsays]

[If there's part of her that's relieved they aren't going to Tevinter, to Minrathous, to Marnas Pell, it's swallowed up by the guilt because she should be able to set it aside, surely? To do her job, to go where she's asked, to do what has to be done. But as the whetstone slides along Silkdart so it can be slid back up her sleeve later, the comb doing the work of having her shoulders relax back for the first time since Beleth said Araceli, I'm sure you've heard what's going on.

Araceli knows that how she said what she said would normally have been kept to a living room. More wine in her. But it worked, and it didn't blow up and she said--

Said things she's never said since it happened. Which is something she can examine another day when she isn't at risk of slicing her palm open. Content in company who understands the need for something like this, for sitting and she turns just enough to let Gwenaëlle see the edge of her smile.]

You have no idea how happy that makes me. Of course it's all right, you-- You have a sharp mind, you aren't shy about your opinions, you're here--

[To be fair, some of Naval Presence are probably in Tevinter, keeping track of it all isn't exactly easy.]

You're my friend, I'd want my friend there.

[elegiaque]

( fingers still entangled in the ends of araceli's hair curl around her upper arm and press comfort there briefly, returning to their task—separating hair into sections, working it into something tight and practical and probably, in technique, akin to the sort of braids she finds in the mirror after iorveth has spent an evening in her company. )

I'll be there, then. I've one up on half of them, ( what, in her mouthy attitude? no— ) I can already swim exceedingly well.

( the rest, she's getting the hang of. vane had offered lessons and gwenaëlle had been fast to take him up on it; has spent much of this voyage in flint's shadow, literally and figuratively. she takes to the sea in ways she wouldn't have envisioned of herself, but perhaps would not greatly surprise any one of her parents. de coucy will dislike it for much the same reasons as emeric so disliked asher hardie.

araceli makes sense to her, here. the shape of her in new light, which is old light: ah, this is the how, the why. that thedas' rough handling should tie her in knots when the sea seems so expert at undoing them seems obscene—if her hands can ease it even a little, here they are. )

If I've got to answer to anyone, it might as well be someone I know has some fucking sense.

( there's a great deal of fondness in that sharply frank assessment. araceli knows what she's about, and gwenaëlle respects it. )

[foxsays]

[A lean back into it. How few people does she (can she) say that she'd trust enough for any part of this. (Korrin doesn't count though plenty of people probably don't trust the person they love or share a bed with, she hasn't been that naive for more than half her life now but because she does trust her, she doesn't count.)

The light isn't fantastic but she does tilt the blade enough to get an idea of what might be going on, approves with her smile.]

Well considering that I've yet to see some of them ever so much as volunteer for an assignment… [A sharper pass of stone along blade before she tests it.] And you wouldn't need lessons spelled out to you the way some do who labour under some strange delusions.

[Men. Or Templars. Or maybe Templar men because Coupe cuts to the bone and understands, and had she said some of things she's had to say before but to Coupe...]

I grew up a little like this. My father was - is - a pirate captain. [How do you talk about what you left behind when you're a spirit that doesn't go back but when the people are alive, a little bit of a problem but she might as well. This is the salt air, the sort of cold that cuts deep to the bone with not enough land about to shelter them from all of the worst of it, the sway beneath them that her legs have never forgotten. (That scared her once, more than anything, that the she would forget the sea, and it her, and it wouldn't love her again.)] And I know how some of this goes. Or should go. Not so much the Venatori part or the Corypheus part but everything else I know, I don't think I've ever not known.

Maybe now we've more people joined up - Captain Flint and Vane signed up too - so maybe we should have a night of it when everyone is back and not dying. Drinks. Cards. Dice. Grown-ups only.

[So. Perhaps not everyone on second thought, the edge of a little smirk thrown in because you can't pick your staff unfortunately.]

[elegiaque]

Are we allowed to go?

( grown ups only—but, well, the joke is that they are. it's light, bittersweet because that's the sort of sweetness that she knows best, warm in a way she's still learning to be with friendships based on more than quicksand and quick feet. it has been so long since she wrote gregoire; she wonders would he even recognize her, now?

the girl who left orlais never went back. she smooths araceli's hair beneath her fingers, weaves it tight so she'll be able to see when she needs to, so hands will find nothing to grab at behind her. )

It's a good idea. And I will be volunteering for every fucking assignment if it gets me out of Kirkwall while—

( oh, right: )

Thranduil has a great idea, for our public relations.

( doesn't she sound thrilled about it, araceli. )

[foxsays]

I don't want to alarm you-- [Her free hand gropes back, pats carefully since she doesn't want to undo the work on the braids at all] but we very much will be the grown ups. The most grown up of the grown ups.

[Speaking the truth out here on the deck, and it's the fact that she can do it. Outside. Not that she ever minded being able to say it on a crystal or in a warm room behind thick walls but knowing that this is good too is an added little solace. Silkdart goes back up her sleeve, cold enough that she could shudder then it's her folding knife. Rapiers next, or that's the plan, rapiers, the possible assignments until curiosity gets the better of her.

It often does, she's no better than Lux.]

What does Thranduil have planned…

[Suspicion? What suspicion? No one at all heard what they said to one another back after the clarification debacle.]

[elegiaque]

( leaving aside for a moment that that is definitely, in its truth, the most terrifying thing araceli has ever said, to be sure— )

He's going to convert, and we're going to marry.

( 'resignation' is not the typical mood of brides-to-be, but gwenaëlle has never been typical anything. there's a wryness to it, oh: they always wanted her to marry well. to marry politically, to dance that dance, and here another finger curls on the monkey's paw. thranduil, everything her parents wished for and nothing at all they wanted. this is not what her father had envisioned. her grandfather will come around sooner, but she doesn't expect him not to be perturbed. )

Rifters, ( she says, brightly, ) you're just like us. Or that's the message he hopes to send—integration. I don't know if it's going to work as well as it might have done, before my lord's inability to keep his prick out of his house staff became such public knowledge—I'm no one's idea of an ideal bride.

( but it's not as if they've got a better alternative, and if they play it just right... )

[foxsays]

[Andrastianism. Which from what Araceli has seen of Thranduil so far fits. Is in keeping with her concept of what a marriage is in the first place: contracts, treaties, reputations and legacies secured neatly with fortunes neatly bound and parcelled, though tossing in the religion is new to her. But it's integrating, isn't it?

And now she's wondering if her silence is stretching too long.]

Marriage is...I can see where he's coming from. We're in uncharted waters now for all the things we've won. Anything to make us seem more legitimate. That there are those of us who do have a stake in the world, in being here, invested. It's a-- marriage is a way to do it, it's just--

[How to explain this. Delicately. She can hear that tone, and her hesitance in getting her words out isn't any better here either. (The idea of ever selling this to Korrin, any other time it'd be enough to have her laughing until she was sick.)]

I could say you'd be an ideal bride but you'd see through it, but I'll still say it: you have conviction, you say what you think and you mean it and that's far more than most. You know more because you're in the room. But politics are politics, everyone finds a way to tie you up in a noose over anything, the best thing is to get out and bind their hands with it. You're the only two who could do it, though a rifter and Andrastianism might be a little trickier. Did you know there's a cult about us?

[Casually said, that chat with Myrobalan before the negotiations is coming in handy in ways she didn't expect in case Thranduil needs to be made aware of things and who better than someone he'd listen to for passing on relevant information.]