Galadriel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
laurenande) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderift2018-09-06 11:34 pm
laurenande) wrote in faderift2018-09-06 11:34 pm
Simple Gifts [Closed]
WHO: Galadriel, Thranduil, Solas, Myrobalan, Merrill, Kitty, Lakshmi, Teren, Marcoulf, Jang, Obi-Wan, and Anders
WHAT: A trip to a perfectly normal Chantry in the middle of nowhere.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The Island of Alamar, Ferelden.
NOTES: Current warnings, to be updated: Graphic Descriptions of Gore
WHAT: A trip to a perfectly normal Chantry in the middle of nowhere.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The Island of Alamar, Ferelden.
NOTES: Current warnings, to be updated: Graphic Descriptions of Gore
The Abbey on the White Cliff
Travel to the Abbey on the White Cliff is no easy matter. While it stands not far from Amaranthine, the waters between the mainland and the island shores are a wicked confluence of eddies and razor sharp rock. The rain is ever-present here and the wind moves unpredictably at the best of times. Ships of size cannot travel easily to the island of Alamar and small boats are rarely steady through the choppy water. Fortunately, as the Inquisition approaches, the world takes some pity on them and the waters seem to still and calm. The clouds linger but, at the very least, they don't open above them until they have reached the land.
The island is a grey affair, all rocks and scrub and damp. The village, an austere looking outcropping of buildings, is entirely made from the local stone and, were it not for the red clay roofing, would blend into the landscape seamlessly. Very few people have strayed into the rain to greet the Inquisition and, without the voices to echo off the stone, most sound is drowned in the lapping of waves and the heavy fall of rain. As a result of the weather and the lack of citizens, the town has the general quality of a graveyard.
The merchants who work the docks are affable enough and, after unloading their haul and securing it somewhere a bit drier, offer to take the Inquisition up to the Abbey proper. The rain slows before long and the merchants lead the Inquisition to the main roads and, let them on their way. Fortunately, the Island is not terribly large and, even walking, it will take only a few hours to arrive at the far side of it.
As the party leaves the village and the shore, the island landscape opens before them. Sloping moors give way to periodic outcroppings of rock and, against the horizon and the far end of the island, there rests a dark forest of pines. The Abbey on the White Cliff stands at the far side, at the top of the hill and overlooking the waves. The road they travel is an easy one, well worn, and the buildings come into view long before they reach them--they stand several stories tall, made of the same stone as the village. They are moss-covered and have the look of an old building that has been questionably kept--at least, from a distance.
The closer one gets to the buildings, the more obvious the additions and repairs become. Windows that have no business holding glass have had colorful windows inset to them. The doors are heavy, wooden, and new. The ironwork on the walls is polished and unworn by the rain. There are no torches lit but, once the Inquisition members have reached the doors, they open promptly.
They are greeted by a Chantry Sister with a bright smile and rosy cheeks and, without hesitation, the lot of them are welcomed into the Abbey.
OOC:
Hey guys! So I plan on aggressively GMing this one. Basically I want to run this like D&D, or as near as I can manage.
The location threads below are available for single player/two player exploration, I will be tagging you with information based on where you go or what you do, but if you want to do a bigger thread please just use the team threads at the bottom. That way if you all decide you want to check out the [INSERT LOCATION HERE] and it leads you to [DIFFERENT LOCATION] I can move you along without changing threads.
Because of your proficiencies, different characters will have advantages in different areas/while talking to different people, so groups are best. I will also be PMing your character journal periodically with any information that your character may have picked up on that nobody else would.
The NPCs are available for talking to or questioning by any number of people. Their general locations are in their thread headers so you can travel there as a crew or ask me to send them at you, if you so desire.
Feel free to do new top-levels if you guys really want, I am just here to try and make this fun.
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"It is very pretty, and it does not burn to touch which is a pleasant surprise," Alvar says calmly, as if she is explaining a recipe to someone who has no interest in baking. "I thank you for showing me, you must certainly be worried about how I will react."
She pauses then and draws a deep, almost wheezing breath. She lets it out calmly through her nose and then speaks again.
"You may cast them, if you like, though I cannot guarantee they will stay lit," she agrees but there is something there, a pause in her words. At her side, Brigette shuffles and makes a small, almost imperceptible sound in her throat.
"You are clever and your spell is very keen, but I must ask: you have come all this way, and walked a good part of it, through cold and driving rain...would you not simply wish me to heal your eyes so that you might see again?"
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But old habits die hard and to be a mage in the south is always to wonder how poorly people might perceive your gifts. He'd been insulated from it, but never immune.
Banished abruptly as it was by Alvar's reassurance, Myr's concern is yet swiftly back at the fore when she takes that wheezing breath. He's not a healer of any talent but he knows something wrong when he hears it, though he's not quite so rude as to interrupt her with fussing. After, perhaps, he'll ask--
If, that is, the thought isn't blown entirely out of his head by her offer.
His expression blanks with the force of his surprise, eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline over the blindfold (something that makes the scars beneath--that much more obvious). "I," he starts, stops, fumbling his words. "The healers said--it wasn't--I don't--"
You were thorough, Sestina had said in her dry, passionless way. Even if you had left anything to work on it would take a miracle to restore it. Without that, and she'd shrugged, a sound he hadn't understood at the time. Does, now, in memory; can imagine the expression that went with it--one of resignation laced with annoyance at the unreasonableness of her patients.
He swallows hope, painful and jagged, shoves it ruthlessly down back where it belongs. "There aren't," he chokes out around it, "eyes to heal any longer. I don't know you could."
no subject
"It is true," she assures him eagerly. "She can, the Reverend Mother can do such miracles--she has done them before."
Without much pause to ask, she lifts her hands and his within them to press his hand against her face. There is nothing of note there, smooth skin and a normal profile, round cheeks and a smile that lifts them higher. Her cheeks are wet, though, with her joy and that is...no small thing.
"When I came here--I could not see," Brigette starts and halts, her mouth open but soundless.
"Her eyes had been burned from her head, her face was scarred and dented with the shape of the brand that did it," Alvar explains for her, calmly and without nonsense. She takes a wheezing breath again and clears her throat with a quiet cough. "It can be done again, if you wish me to."
no subject
Myr stands frozen with his hand on Brigette's face, fingers damp with her tears, as between them she and Alvar explain exactly what a miracle might be. Something in him--something small, and stunted, but well-fed for all the disappointments he's seen in the Inquisition--warns him his own soft heart and foolish trust may get him into trouble once again. Believing this, of everything else he's ever believed, may come at so high cost of hurt that he can't, he shouldn't--
--And yet how could he do anything but, with Brigette's face whole beneath his hand and her overwhelming joy plain to the touch. Miracles are real--he's always known it, always believed it with all his heart--even if the showy sort had never been for him. He makes a noise low in his throat, a tearless sob to match soundless weeping of a woman who'd been as blind as he. (To think of the cruelty she'd endured. To think that could be taken away.)
"Maker's love," he breathes, at last. "What would--" He clears his throat of the hope that threatens once more to strangle him, ducks his head--but doesn't pull his hand back from where Brigette's placed it.
"What would it cost?"
The last creature to offer him has sight had been a demon. It eats at him to have to ask--to not take it simply on faith--but ask he must.
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"The cost is mine," she says in the same tone as a grandmother who offers to purchase her grandchildren gifts. "And I give it willingly and with joy in my heart."
She rises then and Brigette has the mind to step back and aid her as she stands.
"The Maker has given us a gift, has given me a gift. It taxes me terribly to use it...but if I do, I can save those who are marred, who are near to death, who have been treated with such cruelty by this world. How can I possibly abstain? Why would I ever wish to?"
The smile in her voice is audible and she reaches out to touch his cheek and run her thumb across the edge of the fabric over his eyes. Her fingers are bone thin and frail, the skin wrinkled and delicate--she must be nearly a century in age.
"To withhold His gift is wrong and I shall not, unto my dying breath, entertain the notion of doing so."
CW: eye gore; also, he's got the blindfold on still but this may be the only use of this icon ever
That is both a reassurance and not. Myr's awestruck expression lingers still but it's touched now with a faint dread; he can read between the lines of what she says, of Brigette's quiet, sad comment: Her body is nearing its end.
He also knows the species of self-sacrifice that lets her relate all of this with such equanimity and reverence for what she'd been given--and more than the offer of healing that leaves him awed. Maker of All, let me have that faith and surety one day. His own gifts might require as much of him; let him meet it with such reverent calm.
He nearly flinches away when she touches his cheek, the breath catching in his throat; he knows enough now to know she's seen worse than what lies beneath that blindfold, seen worse and healed worse. That she'd not judge him for it. But-- "Why me?"
His voice is smaller than he'd like. Smaller and more doubting. Why him, when she'd barely met him, when there's so much she doesn't know-- That she should. "I--because--Your Reverence, it wasn't--an accident that left me this way. Or anyone's cruelty. I--"
Every time he's confessed this it's hurt. It hasn't gotten any easier, but if he'd accept what's been held out to him, there's only one way he can do it with a clean conscience (or something close). She needs to know. And if she chooses to grant her last miracle to someone more worthy once she does--
Let that be the Maker's judgment on him.
"I did this to myself. I--I blinded myself. When my Circle fell. I was c--I was caught by magic that warps the mind, I saw things--" To relate it brings back a fragment of that horror; it always will, he suspects, with some detached analytical part of himself. "--I didn't know if they would stop. So I--"
Unable this time to put what he'd done into words, tongue stilled, he lifts both hands to show--fingers hooked so, raked through the fragile flesh of eyelids to the eyes beneath. He was strong from years of training. He was thorough.
It hadn't taken long to do.
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"You were driven to this," Alvar replies, her voice calm and unaffected by the sight of his eyeless face. Brigette is silent, her breath held, and she says nothing as they converse. "Just because your pain was wrought by your own hands does not mean you are not deserving of healing."
She pulls her hand back then, at last, and there is a shuffle of cloth as she leans against Brigette. Her breathing is heavier now, more dramatic than it had been before, and she has trouble standing to speak with him.
"As for why you, of all people? That answer is the simplest. You are here." She draws a wheezing breath and lets it out, the next is a bit easier. "Whatever the Maker's plan, it brought you with the Inquisition, it brought you before Brigette of all of us, and then unto me. Why you? It could have been anyone else, but you...of all people...were here. How can I refuse you?"
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But to hear it from someone with Alvar's authority and obvious grace from the Maker goes a long way toward healing that years-old hurt. How can I refuse you? she asks, knowing now everything there is to tell and extending her hand still--and that undoes him at the last. He clutches the blindfold to his chest with both hands, shoulders rounded and shaking as he gives in at last to quiet juddering sobs.
"Please," is all he manages between one and the next; if it's the Maker's intent, if he can be healed, then who is he to spurn that gift?
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"Do not weep," Brigette says to him as she approaches again. Her hands light on his shoulders and, after a moment of pause she draws him into an embrace. "When the Reverend Mother has rested she will heal your eyes.
"You will be restored, I promise," Brigette tells him softly and holds him. When he breaks their embrace she will lead him from these apartments and show him his own, but for now they linger in the warmth of the hearth and the light of Alvar's room.