WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open WHAT: Kirkwall adventures WHEN: Kingsway WHERE: Kirkwall + Wounded Coast NOTES: Hit me up on plurk/discord for a closed starter or put something up and I'll roll with it, starters in the comments
Her fingertips touch the skerry, scraping over barnacles as she hauls herself up and out, turning to kneel as the water runs in sheets down and off her cloak, the hood sliding back with a good shake of her head. If she has to, she'll slide back in if Church needs her to but from here it gives Araceli the perfect vantage point to observe his form as well as answer. On the tip of her tongue is the quickest, easiest response (that's plagiarism) that might be shot down as easily (no one else from your home is here, it's been three years - almost - is anyone else ever going to come, who would know unless you told them) and instead she takes a deeper breath. Thinks of how long it must surely take Gwenaëlle to write her poetry. Of her first meeting with Beleth on a rooftop to start their bard lessons, the calluses worn into her fingertips from the lute. Her mother's father who drew beautiful things including the ink on her right shoulder.
"You do remember I'm a bard, don't you? It is a lot of study and hard work to do any of it. None of it is a thing done in an instant; people see the end result of a thing, same as a meal, but there's all that goes to making it. More than the moments immediately leading up to it. The years to even allow for that." More for her friends than for herself, the idea that they're being undervalued, their hard work, the backhanded clumsiness of the compliment edging around suspicion at flattery.
Better to focus on the cloak, lifting an arm of it. "This? Oh it's not heavy, it helps swimming, actually. It came out of a rift back about the time we were all making repairs at Llomerryn. I swim faster with it so for me, that's saying something, and it allows me to go longer beneath the water without breathing so it's got useless applications for the project, if I had any idea what it was made of I could perhaps track down more somehow, all I know is that it's not leather, it feels wrong for leather."
"Being a bard is different." His form is...sloppy, heavy-handed, still this side of a beginner. But he manages. For now, he comes to a stop, floating, gently kicking legs and waving his arms enough to keep afloat. "Because a bard's not just someone versed in all the arts." Oh sure. There are bards that are just bards. But some bards are more. Some are spies. Assassins. Scouts. "But also, because a bard's versed in all the arts. That's not the augh something touched my leg!"
He flails in an instant, goes under, and it's a hectic few moments before he's back up and swimming. Fuck this conversation, he's heading for land. And it's record time (for him) in reaching the skerry, slapping a hand against the rock, sliding a little as he clambers up.
"...I think it was just a fish. So now I feel, y'know, sufficiently stupid."
"In some ways," half an agreement because there's the side of being a bard that's lonely. The door open until it isn't, the way that you are watched, weighed, measured but in that respect how is it so different to being a rifter, to being the common girl risen to the ranks of queensguard? That's breathing to her. "But the arts very much matter, if you fuck up in front of them there they'll eviscerate you and you'll wish it had been a knife somewhere spilling everything out through the petticoats."
Almost a relief at the Winter Palace to have the invasion, the fighting, to drop the lute and the playing her polite little part of curiosity behind the mask to have her blades out with a small pack of terrified nobles stinking of perfumed sweat behind her. That idea cuts short, her hand grabbing his wrist to assist in hauling him up, steadying him.
Araceli's small but stubborn, she can tug hard when she has to.
"There was at least one octopus not long after we came here, nothing terribly exciting. No sharks." As she smiles with as many teeth.
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"You do remember I'm a bard, don't you? It is a lot of study and hard work to do any of it. None of it is a thing done in an instant; people see the end result of a thing, same as a meal, but there's all that goes to making it. More than the moments immediately leading up to it. The years to even allow for that." More for her friends than for herself, the idea that they're being undervalued, their hard work, the backhanded clumsiness of the compliment edging around suspicion at flattery.
Better to focus on the cloak, lifting an arm of it. "This? Oh it's not heavy, it helps swimming, actually. It came out of a rift back about the time we were all making repairs at Llomerryn. I swim faster with it so for me, that's saying something, and it allows me to go longer beneath the water without breathing so it's got useless applications for the project, if I had any idea what it was made of I could perhaps track down more somehow, all I know is that it's not leather, it feels wrong for leather."
no subject
He flails in an instant, goes under, and it's a hectic few moments before he's back up and swimming. Fuck this conversation, he's heading for land. And it's record time (for him) in reaching the skerry, slapping a hand against the rock, sliding a little as he clambers up.
"...I think it was just a fish. So now I feel, y'know, sufficiently stupid."
no subject
Almost a relief at the Winter Palace to have the invasion, the fighting, to drop the lute and the playing her polite little part of curiosity behind the mask to have her blades out with a small pack of terrified nobles stinking of perfumed sweat behind her. That idea cuts short, her hand grabbing his wrist to assist in hauling him up, steadying him.
Araceli's small but stubborn, she can tug hard when she has to.
"There was at least one octopus not long after we came here, nothing terribly exciting. No sharks." As she smiles with as many teeth.