[OPEN] there is a light that i leave on

[heirring]

WHO: Wysteria, Marcoulf, Flint and OPEN
WHAT: Open post/catch-all/buries myself in top levels
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Kirkwall and misc
NOTES: Prose or brackets are a-okay. Feel free to hit me up on DM or discord if you want something specific that isn't here. Just posting a wildcard and winging it is awesome too.

Comments

you're forgiven because it took me 600 year to tag it back

[katabasis]

"Some," he says, pulling in the sheet and shortening sail as they hack their way as close to the wind as the rig is able to go. "Though I wouldn't claim encyclopedic knowledge. This might surprise you, but they're not easy texts to find up North."

That much is, for better or worse, clearly a joke - clipped and dry in counterpoint to the sea spray flecking over the skiff's combing, pitched high by the boat's bow and snatched back by the breeze.

"Why?"

[elegiaque]

Whatever it says about Flint in making the joke, it cannot be ignored that Gwenaëlle laughs, short and sharp. She braces herself in the boat with her tools, but half her mind is still somewhere else, turning this problem over again and again—

“I met one, recently.” Unimpressive, by her tone. Not an experience she's eager to repeat, either, for various reasons. “It struck me that the only thing stopping her from benefiting from generations of Dalish brought up to revere her memory seems to be inclination. A decided lack of give a fuck.”

Fair enough; Gwenaëlle likewise generally does not give a fuck about the Dalish.

However.

“But if one ancient mage could find her way through the eons, having set herself up as a god...and they had an entire pantheon, supposedly dead or locked away or, whatever, but, she's supposed to have been dead, too.”

Who's to say where the rest are? Or what they might be doing? How any of them might intend to benefit from the chaos of Corypheus's rise, with a population of elves ripe for plucking.

[katabasis]

This isn't the direction he expects this conversation to cut in, but that too is becoming normal. This is what happens when the world starts to fall apart, as things that have been true for a hundred years or more and once looked as stone begin to instead resemble a spool of grey flecked thread unraveling. Ancient magisters can break their chains, the Veil can be ripped open, and Gwenaëlle Baudin will take meetings with Dalish gods. Why does anyone bother to say that anything is impossible?

The wind rises and shifts. He adjusts the lay of the boat's tiller to obey it.

"From the report made, it sounded like only a piece of Mythal still survives." Which is neither here nor there. He knows something of turning sharp edged fragments into weapons. "Even so, it's not inconceivable someone like her could use what's left to some greater consequence than stealing a boy."

[elegiaque]

“Well, a small piece of shit will stink up the place if you trek it inside, won't it,” is her slightly acerbic assessment of Mythal, who did not do much to endear herself to Gwenaëlle upon first meeting. Or indeed upon second or third thought afterwards.

She's minding what he's doing closely—she can talk and learn at the same time—but what she talks about is clearly something that's weighed on her some.

“It feels like a weakness to me, but I don't know if it's one that anything can be done about.”

[katabasis]

Is that true? There is some shaped part of him that thinks it must be. There's nothing really to be done to ward against the possibility of Dalish gods running amok, weaponizing whoever they might care to for the sake of some goal or want that may be as difficult to parse as their identities are. It should be easy to agree on the futility of it.

But--

He studies the hack of the sea before them, the rocky edge of the coastline to windward. "When you met Mythal - how did they seem?"