faderift | OPEN | i'll be working

Entry tags:

OPEN | i'll be working

WHO: Rey, Kylo, Nari, Aro, Myr, whoever wants to get drafted into chopping stumps in the rain for a pittance come on it's fun
WHAT: Chopping stumps in the rain for a pittance! Possibly inadvisable trebuchet action! Nari open while she's being a bummer!
WHEN: Kingsway
WHERE: Wounded Coast, Sundermount, and Kirkwall
NOTES: CW: discussion of character death in III

I. Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies (Myr: first half of Kingsway, Sundermount)

Nari's been waiting to test this ever since she'd slammed open the door to the room she'd shared with Myr. Finally it's not blistering and oppressive enough that it's not a horrifying idea to take the materials for the small scale trebuchet she'd drawn up plans for to Sundermount—where theoretically nobody would be bothered by the repeated launch of magically enhanced exploding rocks—to build it. Plus, there are a lot of rocks to magically enhance to explode.

Myr is duly informed of her readiness, and since they're both early risers, out they go into the wild brown yonder early one morning. Once there, Nari claps her hands together and asks with some enthusiasm: “What should we try first?”

II. I'm Only Happy When It's Complicated (Rey, Kylo, Aro, and The Hapless Voluntold: latter half of Kingsway, Wounded Coast)

[one thread~!]

With the long periods of heat lessening, Nari decides it's finally safe to take her crew out for the heavy work of clearing. The space near the Wounded Coast the Seneschal had allotted them for the final home of the course they had built certainly had space enough. It was also, blessedly, flat enough.

It also had stumps enough. Stumps enough of trees that had been old and established enough that once they arrive with the cart of provisions, thick ropes, shovels, picks, pitchforks, and axes, the elf looks out on the studded field with a dryly amused look. Luckily they don't need to clear all of the area, but there's more than enough for a solid couple of weeks of work.

She eyes the sky with much the same look as she'd given the field. It responds with a quiet disaffected rumbling promise of rain.

“Well,” she says to those assembled, “we'd better get done what we can while we can. If you've never done this before, we'll be digging around them until the roots are exposed, chopping through the main roots and whatever else we can get, getting ropes around them, and getting the horses to do the rest.” She hefts a shovel over her shoulder. “Questions?”

III. Time Has a Funny Kind of Violence (end of Kingsway, Kirkwall)

One morning Nahariel wakes up and it's here: the sharp cool smell of the autumn wind and the promise of the winter to come. With it comes the body's memory of the beginning of the decline from which Sina would never recover, and with that comes sudden intermittent hunched shoulders. Staring out into even blue sunny skies with a dull and tired bleakness mismatched to them. A wet shine in her eyes for small reasons, or seemingly no reason at all. The stop of work for a long moment before she shakes her head and starts again. A false ring to her buoyant good nature, as if it's being forced.

It isn't always, but it's sometimes. Especially when the wind blows.

She can be found more often in the Memorial Garden. Oftener still in the fringes of the statue's grove where her clansister's trees still stand both new and ancient to watch the leaves of those trees that are not evergreen begin to turn for the second time; the first that Sina won't see.

She will still greet company with a small smile.

IV. Wildcard

Hi!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Do you want us doing this the normal way?" He eyes the equipment that they've brought with them, now that he knows what they'll be doing. Wouldn't it just be easier to pull them from the ground with the Force? He knows not everyone in this group has that particular gift, however. Still, he focuses on the stump nearest him, his hand out stretched.

At least his way he could get it done somewhat faster. It was still a bit of effort to exert the Force in this land, but it was easier to him than having to dig the stumps out by hand. He would eventually end up alternating once he got tired of trying to rip the stumps from the ground.

Well, she hadn't thought about that at all. After the first stump rips free from the earth under Kylo's outstretched hand while she stares and remembers the way he and Rey had all but crushed the Red Lyrium Behemoth, she decides to change the plan of attack.

"...Right. That'll ...be significantly faster than the horses. What do you all think about digging, chopping the most major roots, and then having the two of you," a nod at Kylo and then Rey, "alternate ripping them up? It'll save us the rope-work."

Anyone looking in Rey's direction when Ben pulls the stump from the ground using the Force will likely catch her eyes rolling briefly skyward. She steps forward when Nari suggests her plan, nodding her head.

"That would probably be easier on all of us, because pulling the stumps straight from the ground will exhaust the both of us that much quicker," she says, with a somewhat pointed look in Ben's direction.

He shrugs, not even remotely phased by the look he's getting. If he was used to anything by now it was Rey deciding he's being ridiculous. He picks up the nearest tool to chop free a stubborn root on the next stump before it seemingly flings itself away from him like a marionette with it's strings pulled.

"You don't have to do it this way." He looks pointedly back at Rey, daring her to challenge him. While he did become exhausted using the Force in this place, he'd had a few years more practice in using it. He wasn't going to let himself get tired quickly.

"I never get tired of seeing that sort of magic."

Aro casts an admiring look at Kylo. He remembers him from when they arrived together, in the snow. Those powers had been impressive then. They're still impressive now.

He heads over to one of the other stumps, drawing out a long knife as he does so. A young dragon, about the size of a wolf, is with him, and flaps around him at shoulder height, watching what he does. He starts cutting through, working his knife around.

"Makes me wish I had earth-moving powers. Can't do everything with lightning, can you?"

"We don't have to do it any one way," Nari says with a grin, retrieving a second axe from the cart, and moving over to where Aro's employing his knife, "it just has to get done." She offers out the axe towards him when she gets there.

"Although, I think you'll find it's both easier and faster to have that way be taking an axe to those roots rather than a knife, even if the knife's what you're used to. I'll teach you the right way to stand and swing, if you're not familiar." She pauses for a second and then furrows her brow thoughtfully. "Korrin did tell me she split and felled a tree with lightning once, if you think weakening the roots that way would do as well or better for you."

At this rate she's going to be the only one out here using an axe.

And really, that suits her fine.

"Exactly." He nods to Nari, turning his attention back to his work as he focuses on moving the second stump free with his outstretched hand. Eventually it comes loose with a few cracks as the roots snap from being forced apart. He takes a spade in his hands to dig up the rest of what didn't get pulled up.

"No, I don't suppose we can do everything with lightning or magic." He's loathe to call his abilities 'magic' but for arguments sake, he doesn't try to correct anyone. He didn't see it as magic in the same way that natives mages used magic, but the distinction was there if he chose to point it out.

Truth be told after the debacle that was Tevinter, Myr's in the mood for some exploding rocks in his life. It's a--well, it's not a simple problem to solve, precisely, but it's a straightforward one that can be worked through start to end to a satisfying conclusion. And once they had that, the Inquisition would stand the stronger against her enemies--and given how much those enemies had been proliferating out in the open lately, they'd need every edge they could get.

So: Straightforward, and useful enough to do away with the gnawing anxiety of you're not doing enough in his gut.

He'd been thinking glyphs on the way up, iterating over possibilities with half his attention while keeping the rest firmly on following Nari and not coming to grief on the terrain. It's thinking enough to give him a moment's pause before answering her, leaning casually on his staff as he considers. "Paralysis'd be the safest if anything goes wrong. And I'm still not totally certain they won't trigger when they're jostled, so best to start with something that won't set us on fire or knock us off a cliff if it goes off untimely."

Despite the decidedly unexciting nature of his contemplations, there's a joy to match Nari's beneath the words. This is going to be some much-needed fun, whatever happens.

"I don't know, that sounds awfully safe," ribs Nari. There's a grunt of effort from her and the sound of something large moving; rock against rocky earth. Then it stops.

"Which sounds better: glyph the rock and then get it into the sling, or get it into the sling and then glyph the rock?" A brief pause, and then jovially, "I suppose if it were the former it'd be more likely to only blow us up, not us and the trebuchet."

"All magic is incredibly safe." Myr's deadpan expression is top-notch. "Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

He straightens to put up his staff as she shifts the rock around, about to offer his back to the effort of moving it when she speaks up. "O ye of little faith," he remarks with a grin, "I can absolutely blow up both us and the trebuchet whatever order we do this in."

Which is a remarkably reassuring thing to say to a non-mage, isn't it? Call it a measure of how comfortable he is with her he's willing to engage in that sort of gallows humor, more suited to company not liable--like most of southern Thedas--to spook at the mention of destructive magic.

"But let's start by glyphing the rock first. You'll want to have your--what're we gonna call 'em, siege-mages?--working ahead of the rest of their teams, right? So you've got a stack of glyphed rocks ready to go. --Which, come to think, could be a bad idea itself but--" He cuts himself off with a wave of one hand. "I'll work on that one later."

Edited 2018-09-15 04:22 (UTC)

"If you manage to blow everything up we'll call that testament to your skill then," Nari replies easily, her tongue as firmly in her cheek as Myr's in his, "I'll make sure to give Falon'Din a glowing account of your work, inasmuch as the Maker would accept his reference."

Except she knew for a certainty now that Falon'Din wasn't waiting there beyond the veil, and by Chantry accounts neither was the Maker.

(Well, sometimes the noose at the gallows bit at the neck a little. She thins her lips, doesn't falter, moves back into the work.)

"You think having a stack would be better than a sort of—" There's a shuffling of feet: what had become her aural equivalent for the gesture of using ones hands to search for a word, "—as-you-go? I guess that'd lessen the burden and allow us more shot, but the storage—" Nari cuts herself off, huffs a laugh. "Well. I'm only saying what you've already said. Five steps front and you'll be at the first of them."

"If he'd give me much of a reference after sending one of his People back to him untimely." Which seemed an impolite thing to do whether or not the god in question was real. Talking of these things in anything but jest, though, is a space Myr's still not sure of for all he's spent a year befriending the Dalish at every opportunity. Best, then, to move away from it--

He murmurs appreciation for the guidance, takes those five steps forward and feels around with a toe for the rock she'd indicated. Ah, there--he hunkers down to put both hands on it, sussing out its rough dimensions by touch. "I don't know," he admits, cheerily. "We talked a little--a very little--of the strategy of siege weapons in the Circle, but not even a knight-enchanter will ever have a command so no one ever went into much detail on tactics, let alone logistics. I s'pose what matters is how fast you'd want to launch them once they're loaded, yeah? And then all those fiddly bits we haven't tested out yet on whether they'll detonate prematurely."

A slate, he thinks, is what they need; they can write down lists in two columns of what they'd need to know to go with one or the other strategy. He tucks the thought away for a later moment, now that he's satisfied he knows the boulder well enough to cast on it. "So--let's get that. I'm going to try the kind that goes off if it lands hard enough first." Because it's most relevant to "will these exploded if knocked around pre-launch" AND it's a vastly easier construct that the other sort.

While it's certainly possible to cast a glyph without inscribing it, he's always found it much easier to draw the things in full--and so he does here, tracing out paralysis in miniature with a finger across the surface of the boulder. Here an extra curlicue, there an embellishment to store the trigger, and shortly it flicks to pale-glimmering life in the afternoon sun.

She thinks about continuing to jape—perhaps it's not untimely—but that kind of thing isn't what they're here to talk about.

"As fast as they'll go is the usual hope, I think," Nari replies, the amused shrug evident in her tone. "The reset of the counterweight isn't quick, though, so there's probably enough time to cast for each shot rather than needing a stockpile if for some reason that turns out dangerous," like, for example, if their enemy figures out what's up and starts trying to bombard the piles. That'd take the line out right quick.

She watches Myr cast with interest, her eyes following the lines his finger draws. She doesn't understand a bit of it, of course, but that doesn't stop her mind from curiously trying to latch on in any case. Once it's done, and he's pulled back, it's rock against earth again and the huff of her breath, the sound of rope being fussed with once it stops.

"Right. Read— wait a second, how do I know if the spell's gone off if there's nothing down there to paralyze? Is there a burst of something whether or not it hits a creature?"

Myr makes a meditative noise at that, getting to his feet and taking two healthy steps back to grant her room to work. "Right. Sounds as if the only reason to start piling up glyphed rocks, then, is if you don't have enough mages who can cast it for you on the fly--but that does come with the other problem of storing them. Suppose we ought to write this all down for problems we'll need to solve."

Above and beyond simply getting the glyphs to work, which is the first and most important for feasibility testing. He grins at her question. "I'll feel it when it breaks, so I can tell you whether or not it has--but there should be a flash as well. Though that won't tell us if the rest of the glyph worked; I've no reason to doubt it will, but it's always worth testing. D'you know any brave and foolhardy volunteers who wouldn't mind an afternoon of getting paralyzed while rocks are flung in their direction?"

That's also a joke by tone; there's no way to make any of this safe enough to test around people with live (heh) siege ammunition in play. ...But it would answer some questions!

"Unfortunately, I have to be up here operating the trebuchet," she replies, only half joking. This is the woman who entreated Korrin to repeatedly strike her with lightning to see if her dodging reflexes were up to par. (They had been, mostly.) "Right then. Here we go!" Nari exclaims, "June enaste!"

The cheerful invocation of the god of craft is more habit than anything, but it's still there despite whatever her personal struggles are. The mechanism clicks as she yanks the handle, the wood creaks loudly, and there's a whoosh as the counterweight drops and the crossbeam swings. A bit later, there's a muffled but respectable thud as the boulder slams to earth, but Myr will feel no corresponding discharge of the spell.

"Huh," she says.

"Oho. So it's trebuchet operators we need, then. That's a lot easier sell than 'target'." And she did have her whole little coterie of craftspeople who might be drawn into the role of part-time siege technician... Including one Myr couldn't ever spend enough time with; maybe Simon could be convinced into an excursion one of these days. (It wouldn't, he thinks, be hard.)

Though he can't see any of the action, Myr nevertheless leans forward eagerly as Nari yells her--warcry? benediction?--and lets fly. Then--

"Huh," he echoes, the light of excitement in his expression fading into puzzlement. "That definitely did not go off. Wonder what I did wrong--s'there an easy path down to where it landed?" Troubleshooting spells is hard from a distance.

"Uh..." is the inspired reply. If Myr could hear anyone squinting and peering, which he probably can, it'd be Nari. "Not... no. No there isn't. Nothing good for walking. Perfect for throwing boulders off though." She says the last with a little more animation: hey, we've got that at least. "Back down the way we came."

"Well," Myr says to that, and again: "Well," and then a mild Tevene oath and a huff of laughter. "D'you think there's a way we could get 'em going nearly fast up here? Or somewhere we could get to one?"

Not one to be idle with his hands, he's moved already to the next boulder and begun sketching the glyph on it.

"I could build another trebuchet down there to fling the ones that don't fire back up?" she asks, laughter evident in her voice even if it's not actually coming out in her unreserved barks.

A horrible idea, really, verging on "most horrible", but equally amusing.

"Should I go down and..." And what? Kick it?

"...kick it?"

"That seems eminently sensible," in a teasing tone that says he knows very well it is not. "More trebuchet practice is always to the good. I'll just put up a barrier and you'll have a nice target that can't even get out of the way."

Because what's a horrible idea if you don't double down on it to make it horribler.

"...Honestly, if you'd not mind. That'd been my plan." Because if it wasn't going to light you on fire or electrocute you or summon a demon out of the Fade to eat your foot, sometimes all you could do was kick the magic to see why it wasn't working.

"And then we could learn whether or not a barrier can stop a giant hurtling rock!" Nari exclaims.

Triple down.

"I'm headed down there then. D'you want to come?"

"Part of siegecraft is learning to defend against 'em, isn't it?" Myr replies, grinning wider if anything.

"I'm game. Might give me a better idea of what's gone wrong with it." Or he can just...also kick it. Two feet are better than one, etc. He takes his staff down off his back and makes his way over to her.

They head down the winding path with no great difficulty; it's well traveled and the earth has been tamped down to a decent surface because of it. The area where the boulder landed is a different story for which Nari offers both her hand and running commentary on the little hills, dips, loose rock, and larger stationary ones. And once a snake, but more for the snake's benefit than Myr's, it being a harmless venomless thing.

Finally they reach the site where the boulder they'd hurled had made its landing, half sunk into the earth with a force that had decently cratered the looser surrounding soil and broken a stone it had landed on. The glyph Myr had inscribed still glows with aggravating serenity on its side.

"Well, here it is," she chuckles, "Did the boulder part right at least."

Nari's yet to steer him wrong on one of these expedition and this time's no exception; it frees Myr a little from the navigating to puzzle over what might be the matter with the glyph--

--and he still hasn't got the faintest idea when they arrive at the boulder's landing site. He gives Nari's hand a grateful pat once they're close enough he can sense the glyph and feel his own way over to it with his staff. "It'll be quite the day if I ever screw it up so badly it doesn't do the boulder part right," he retorts through a grin. "Then you can put me behind Venatori lines and I'll sabotage all their equipment to float off into the sky. --Now, let's see..."

He settles into a comfortable lean against his staff, smile fading to thoughtful frown as he feels out the spell through the Fade. It's all there exactly as he'd come up with it, so why-- "Why didn't you work?" he mutters to the glyph--before kicking the boulder in gentle frustration.

The glyph promptly ignites with a snap of not-sound and a flash of paralysis, freezing a look of almost comical alarm on Myr's face.

Not having had any warning but the flash, Nari's look of surprise is a bit more subdued, but the leaning half-step back she'd been in the middle of taking creates its own comedy.

Oddly, or perhaps not oddly at all given the amount of dodge training she's been doing, her foot is placed in such a way that when her momentum and unbalanced position topples her over backwards it catches her a bit to soak a little of the impact. Even so, she hits the ground much like a statue of hers might, the slight hill she'd landed on rolling her face into the dirt.

The wind blows cheerfully across them.

After the few fraught seconds:

"So," slightly muffled by the ground, as the spell lets her relax, "does this mean I needed to shoot the boulder a little higher, or..."

"Uhm," Myr says intelligently, both because he's still thinking through that one and because sometimes paralysis comes off in patches and he can't make many noises other than uhm.

Though when he can, his first is, "You're all right down there?" --because he can imagine what's happened to her, and there's helpless apologetic laughter behind the words. "--But no, that one's on me entirely; I forgot to take the original trigger out. Wouldn't go off until someone touched it even after falling far enough."

if(boulder has hit the ground with force > 10x10^3 N AND someone touches boulder) {paralyze everything}; beginner's mistake.

"I've walked into doors harder," Nari replies with a laugh through her nose that is half whuff and half snort. She groans with comic exaggeration as she sits up and dusts herself off.

"Honestly, if we shot it into the midst of a charge, someone would touch it, so it's not the most inconvenient hurdle there could have been. That's a quick catch though—fixable, I assume?"

"Oh; hardly anything, then," because he's ambled face-first into a lintel a time or two when lost in thought, and knows whereof she speaks. "I'd worried I might have to explain to Cade and the rest of your clan what I'd done to you."

He offers out a hand toward the source of that groan, wincing in sympathy even if he knows it's largely for show. "It was obvious when I set it off--I felt it give way like it usually does, but I'd buried the trigger so deep in the rest of the spellwork I didn't notice it was still there before that. I'm not," his tone takes a turn for the sheepish, "the neatest when I'm working on something new."

And this isn't the first time it's bitten him either.

The source of that groan has become extremely quiet, although after a long silence that is enough to dip its toes into being uncomfortable she does take his hand and get up. There's the sound of more dusting, and then a question asked in such a solicitously casual manner that it's immediately obvious she's being squirrely.

"Why... would you have to explain anything to Cade?"

The silence stretches out and Myr wonders what, exactly, might've gone wrong in the web of his acquaintances that that little joke would be unwelcome. Or maybe she's abruptly reconsidering working with a mage with such sloppy spellwork--that's fair, he admits to himself, and it's kind of her to find a way to spare his feelings before saying so but it's also not the first ti--

Oh. Oh. There's only the slightest hitch in Myr's smile at the question. "Because you're his friend," he says, breezy and innocent. "And he doesn't have so many of them, and I'd feel awful to put one out of commission."

Which is all true, but not all of the truth.

Oh. Dear. His smile twitched. Does Myr know? Myr knows. Myr knows and he is blind. Why is this surprising? It's not like she's been careful, recently. Sylaise, they'd moved in together.

She starts to take the offered out with immediate relief, but reconsiders halfway through the first syllable which means she just sort of makes a croak noise, then whuffs a laugh through her nose, the beads in her hair clicking as she runs her hand back through it. Shy as she is, she's not ashamed of it. Of Cade. Of course, feeling that way is one thing, actually opening her mouth goes a little more like

"I'm... well we're... not... friends." Then, quickly, "No, we are friends, but not just friends." Pause. "I think." Pause. "No, I mean, I know, but... it's complicated?"

You kept an ear out, in the Circle; you knew what your friends were doing (and who) so you didn't give them away in all innocence by mentioning where they'd been together. Myr knows, but also knows well enough not to tell, just as Nari had done him the same service before he and Simon elected to move in together themselves.

His smile grows a little wider--a little warmer and more knowing--as she fumbles through her confession; he knows his own hadn't been much better, when he'd come to her all those months ago to explain why he might need their room to himself some nights. And it's heartening to hear put to voice something he'd long hoped for, his dear friends finding mutual comfort in each other.

"Complicated like splitting your nights between both towers in the Gallows before you decided to move into one room?" he suggests through that smile. "Or complicated in you've not done anything like this before in your life and you don't know where it's bound or what might happen except you want to meet it together?"

Because, well. He's only a few months further along that path.

Complicated like a Dalish elf and a human Templar, both of them fumbling and new. But that's closer to one than the other, so: "The latter. It was sort of... sudden." And also not. It had been... Creators. Had it been a year since she'd asked him to help her with the statue? Theirs hadn't been a smooth progression. It felt out of order sometimes, all fits and starts and unplanned unexpected intimacies before their time. Too close, too far, feelings attached to places she didn't understand and words forced out through throats like tightly clenched fists.

"I just... I came home from the temple of Falon'Din remembering that the future isn't promised to any of us, and I didn't want to go out—didn't want either of us to go out—into the field again without saying... something. Doing... something."

Myr's smile doesn't fade but is transmuted to something less antic by her words, by the emotion behind them-- The too-recognizable emotion behind them.

I almost lost you, he told Simon, the soonest instant he could once they were away from that Vint prison. Even if he'd made the sentiment explicit long before in how he'd embraced his templar, before the Knight-Commander and Benedict and every onlooking guard, without any care for what they might think or say because--

Death, or its near brush, had a marvelous way of simplifying the most complex and snarled things. Whatever else the world might think of them, Myr could no longer bear it thinking they meant only friendship to each other.

That kind of complicated. "Maker," he breathes, half-punctuation and half-prayer. "I hear that. Better to see what you can make of the two of you together than--wait until the opportunity's stolen forever." Casimir.

Not again. Not ever.

There's a whuffed out breath that speaks of agreement every bit as much as words might. "I don't know what'll come of it. Might be that nobody's happy but us," and are they? Happy? She's not sure about that. Are you happy when a dislocated shoulder pops into place? It's less happy and more... right. Which is fine. Nari has never been the giddy type, and she and Cade have spent enough time sitting in right-feeling silence together when they seek each other out that she sees no reason to think it's different for him.

She realizes she's been silent for a while and clears her throat.

"You know how that goes, though."

"I do." Soft and rueful. "Though no one's been too loud about it yet."

And Maker grant the elements of the Inquisition who might get loud continue to look the other way--for his sake, and Simon's, and Cade and Nari's sakes as well.

But that's a thread best not pursued aloud, and so Myr lets it go with a little roll of his shoulders. "But speaking of--" Or not, as the case may be, but whatever, it's his verbal transition to make. "D'you want to go back up there and see if I can do better on the next rock?"

Nari is, perhaps oddly, waiting for Merrill near the entrance to the Alienage rather than in it.

It isn't all that odd. She's been, to her general guilt, keeping the company of the elves of the Inquisition more than she's sought out the company of those living in Kirkwall. Perhaps because it feels worse to be strange to and glanced at sidelong by elves than it is to have the same directed at her by shem'len. The separation between her and a human is obvious and clear-cut. Between her and another elf is blurrier, and being reminded of it is uncomfortable, so she's largely avoided it.

But here she is, raising her hand in greeting, a decent sized pack sitting at her feet and a couple of boards leaning against the crate she's taken up residence on.

Merrill is slightly better at navigating in cities, now - slightly. Kirkwall is a maze and Merrill is without her twine, but she has a dog, now. Barkley may be easily distracted by the scent of food and people willing to pet him (he's no mabari, after all), but he also knows which way rests a warm place to curl up for the night and which spots have smells that should be avoided. With Merrill coming from the market with some food for the night, Barkley is leading the way back to the alienage - which means Barkley also, upon glancing between Nari and Merrill, runs up to Nari to try and get some scratches behind his ears.

Whether or not hugging the other elf is too forward doesn't even cross Merrill's mind. She's been away for some time now, and that means she and her basket of shopping are going to embrace Nari in a tight squeeze.

"You found it! Did it take you long? I still get terribly lost."

She's got a free hand, and that means she's got scratches. Although that means she only has one free arm for the hug, so it's a clunky but cheerful affair of dog, elf, and shopping, which makes it honestly kind of the exact correct hug to be sharing with Merrill.

"Not too long," Nari replies, reaching to shoulder her pack and heft the boards under her arm, nodding towards the alienage--I'll follow. She points with her chin as they walk to indicate the energetic dog bouncing along with them. "Who's this, then?"

Barkley soaks up the scritches with wags of his long-furred tail, panting happily. Merrill squeezes Nari and then lets go to help pick anything up, if she's allowed.

"This is Barkley! I got him back at Skyhold- a noble's dog and one of the barn dogs had a little illicit adventure, and he was one of the puppies. He's been with me ever since." Barkley woofs his agreement and bounds forward, though he's careful not to go too far ahead. It's safer with the two elves. "I've got a great big horse as well, Honeysuckle, and then one of the griffons lets me ride him. They don't stay with me in the alienage, though."

Nari listens to the litany of animals with a slowly spreading grin. She'd not forgotten about Merrill's buoyant enthusiasm of course, that was impossible, but it's an entirely different thing to have it nearby again.

"They don't? I suppose I won't put up a griffon roost while I'm fixing the roof then."

Like most of Nari's jokes of this nature, it's tough to tell whether or not she's actually joking.

"Oh, I don't know," Merrill muses. "I'd quite like it if a stray griffon came to roost on my house!"

Or a non-stray griffon. Any griffon, really.

The chances of that, however, are slim; Merrill laughs a little and then again as Barkley bounds forward to chase a fluttering bit of trash.

More slim now than they would be if Nari installed a griffon roost.

There's plenty of time for outlandish improvements once the roof stops being permeable, though, especially with the winter coming on. At least the season of summer storms is past, so at least Merrill won't have to worry about the immense sheeting rain coming--oh.

"Have you... been home yet?" Nari asks, suddenly sounding a little wary as they continue along. She wonders how bad the leak was. Maybe the elves in the Alienage had swept out the water before it got too deep into the floorboards? (Were there floorboards?)

"Oh- well, no. But I had friends looking after the place."

Rather, there had been a number of elves without homes quite as sturdy who had spent time in her house. They had rotated through, in and out, depending on their needs; some just needed a roof for a few nights while they repaired their own, while others may have suffered an injury that meant Merrill's house was about the best spot they'd have.

"Oh. Good."

Nari smiles. It's a little awkward, as they near the commons of the Alienage, the Vhenadahl rising huge and sturdy into the sky, ringed with fluttering cloth and bright weavings and lamps that are even now being lit as the evening comes on.

Of course the elves here could look after themselves and their own. Maybe one of them had already fixed the leak. It was just like the forest in Hightown: she wanted to do something good, something thoughtful, but in the end, was it even her place to do it? Even if these were elves rather than humans, even if on paper or in her speech she'd count them without thinking as part of the People, she'd been avoiding coming here hadn't she? What was she afraid of?

"Which one is yours?"

Unaware of Nari's internal struggle, Merrill is just taking in the sights of the alienage once again. She waves to a few of the elves she sees, and Barkley trots along properly.

"That one, across from the Vhenadahl," she says - as if all the houses aren't, somehow, across from the Vhenadahl. Merrill does point it out, though; it's a small thing, two or three rooms at most. But it's hers, and she is proud of the little place. It's still standing, for starters.

It sure is.

Nari can't tell from here where the leak is (or leaks are), but there's enough daylight left that she might be able to see the sun through the cracks if Merrill can remember where it came down. If nothing else, she ought to be able to clamber up on the roof with a lantern and have the other woman mark the spaces where it can be seen, although they may have to borrow a ladder for that.

They may have to borrow a ladder anyway.

"Does it feel like coming home, then?" she asks as they approach the door. She'll wait for Merrill to let her in. After all, it's Merrill's house.

"It-" There's a pause, and Merrill doesn't answer for a while as she opens the door (unlocks it with a key hidden under her scarf). The door creaks slightly, and Merrill leaves it open behind her both so Nari can come in and so that the remaining light lets her light a candle so they can see.

There's obvious signs of others coming through; far less dust than would be expected if the house were abandoned, and a bucket that's only half full under the worst of the leaks. Merrill smiles softly, lightning a few lantern on the wall, illuminating the place.

"I don't know, really," she says at last, carrying her candle over to the fireplace. "I think home is people, more than places."

That's a thought that comes easily enough to Nari. As much as she'd loved the plains, they'd always traveled around them. As much as she had learned to love the forest once it had stopped seeming oppressive, it wasn't any particular configuration of trees or deer paths or the way they set their tents so much as it was Dahlasanor.

"I guess studying shem'len architecture, helping build their homes, has made me think of houses as..." she frowns, thinking about it as she walks to the bucket to peer up at the place (or places, if they're running together) in the ceiling that have made it needful. "Another member of the family? They mark their children's heights in the doorways, carve the moulding, are prideful of their appearance in their community. The houses grow with them. Get rings in them like trees." A smile of her own, as she observes the soft one on Merrill's face. "Spend enough time in a space, and I reckon it gets to know you, and you it, and that makes it a people rather than a place."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

OPEN | i'll be working

II. just to start this off

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I. EXPLOSIONS

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for Merrill! :3

THE LATEST.

THE MOST FORGIVEN.

<333

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HOW CAN I BE SO SLOW uwu pls forgive me

MY TURN TO BE SLOW we are killing it

killing it slowly ♪

chugging along

choo choo~