faderift | 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

"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."

OPEN | i'll be working

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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~