faderift | open | tracks will fade in the snow

WHO: Ilias Fabria + YOU
WHAT: Open post + catch-all for the month
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Around the Gallows, mostly
NOTES: Feel free to toss your own starter at this if you'd rather!

labs / infirmary;

[ A Mortalitasi walks into the Gallows. There ought to be a punch line, is what he thinks while he does it. Clio would have given it a good punch line. He would have written her a letter, Today I sailed up the Waking Sea in a cabin the size of Grandmother's pantry, sick as you after that custard, and when I landed, they put me on another boat. "You must have been dying to get there." "Sounds like the perfect place to hang around." Something better. Cleverer. The rafters are quite high.

When Ilias reaches the laboratory space that is to be his new home, he still has a touch of pallor, grey to match his robes. But steady hands pull vial and jar from a travel chest, rod and hook, placing each one precisely in its place. The space is different. The people will be different. The work, too. But he can find ways to make himself useful here. It's why he'd picked the Inquisition — a safer place for him today than Nevarra City, even his Grandmother could not argue with that, but not a safe place. Not anyone's gilded cage.

Still, he'll need the tools for it. A bedroll, in case of late nights, is the last thing he pulls from the chest, but not the last thing he needs.

So it's to the infirmary next, by pale lamplight and cautious step. It's late, perhaps a little later than he ought to be poking around a building he hasn't specifically been granted access to, but his nosing is restrained— ]

Excuse me. [ —And his sheepishness is genuine, upon discovering he's less alone than he'd hoped. ] I meant no intrusion.

library;

[ He isn't here to judge the Gallows' library. Truly, he isn't. It's important to understand what one has to work with. The Necropolis would be an unfair comparison, he'd known that before he stepped through the doors, but even Nevarra City's Circle had its specialities. Its particular benefactors. The Gallows, he assumes, will have the same.

Fewer benefactors, he gathers rather quickly.

Still, Ilias cranes his neck to scan the shelves, top to bottom. Careful fingers ghost across the exposed spines, but it's his face that betrays his mind. A considering hover of the eyes over Beyond the Veil. A warm cringe at Enchanter van Heigl's A Life Among the Dead. A gentle raise of the brows at Our Honoured Dead: A Guide to the Mortalitasi Order.

Well. It's better than nothing. ]

kitchens;

[ It'd been late when he'd started; by the time Ilias finds his way to the mage tower's kitchens, it's well into the small hours, the time of night when quiet beings to take on a certain density, a heaviness in the dark. There's a bed somewhere he's not in, a room whose walls and ceilings he's not eager to get to know just yet. Instead, he has a candle burning down at his right side, a cup of tea at his left getting bitter and cold.

In front of him are just papers — pamphlets, Inquisition briefings, the things every new recruit should know about the state of the world, and a few about its future. A battle they know is coming and can't stop. His breath slows, just so. Knuckles tap-tap against the surface of the table like a count-down before he pulls away, abandoning the lot of it. Not forever, just— he could use a smoke. Fresh air. Stretch his legs. Something.

(Maybe he should have picked the cage.) ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ There's a quiet part of her, below all the bluster and the arrogance and the hideous pride, that knows that she has much to learn, that is desperate to be tutored, that wants to prove herself. She wishes to overcome the misfortune of not being a mage - and even now it's a struggle to look at Ilias without some envy - and she recognises that she has some bumps to smooth.

She simply does not like it being made so obvious, especially by someone who had slighted her so surely in Nevarra. ]

I do not intend to get anyone killed. I know what I'm doing, no matter what your judgements of me might be.

[ It's clear from her look what she thinks of his idea of her needing to learn. There's a dozen things she could say to him on that front and not very many of them would be anything close to pleasant.

Her gaze is sharp, soured by him, and the stiffness of her shoulders shows the hurt and anger that colours the flush of her cheeks. He might be right but that doesn't mean he has to say it and she's determined not to give in to his foolishness. How dare he, she thinks, how dare he come here and lecture her when he had been the one to shun her in the first place.

Bastard. ]

It would depend on who was present, wasn't it? I imagine his friend would've wished to know, and a letter must be sent to whoever was waiting for him in Starkhaven. Apologies, of course. I am not entirely brainless, no matter what you might think of me. [ There's a prickle, then - something like hurt. She's tired and she's far too used to being second best. It feels almost like being home. ] I do not see what right you have to judge me, to test me. You gave up on me a long time ago, Ilias Fabria.

[ There may have been a point, moments or years ago, when it might have mattered more that the brittleness of her shoulders finally cracks through the image he's built up of her in his mind, the shadow labeled danger only because it took on a familiar shape. The details are different; she is something different, a young woman he knows in pieces and assumptions more than wholes. It might have mattered more sooner, that it occurs to him he is holding her to the standards he holds himself to, instead of other people — the ones born from mistakes she hasn't made. Maybe if he'd realized that before he'd pushed her away, if he had tried harder to know her as she is instead of what he's afraid she'll become, she wouldn't have so much to prove now.

But for what it's worth, his eyes do soften. Shoulders shrink. ]

Sidony.

[ What can he say? Years after it would have made a difference, he's sorry? ]

I gave up on many things. It was not any fault of yours.

I do not want to be your judge, I want— [ To undo the last 10 years of his life, maybe? He presses his lips together, trying to center himself. (This is a mistake.) ] Perhaps I was too hasty in ending our meetings. If there are things you need to practice or learn that I can help with, I would rather you have that opportunity than not.

[ It isn't a guarantee. There are things he may still not show her, if he has reason to doubt. But it's an offer, at least. ]

[ There is no regret in her for the sharpness of her words or the immediate urge to raise her voice and scold him. She learned a long time ago that she won't get what she wants from Ilias by flattering her lashes and smiling sweetly; he prefers, she thinks, to see her at her most wise, at her most intelligent, for her to use her words and her good education to prove a point. She's more than happy to do it, a sourness making her purse her lips and draw her hands away from the dead animal, moving immediately to find some kind of washcloth to clean herself with.

Touching dead things, for all that she loves it, does leave a rather rotting smell.

The problem is, of course, that these are all words that she would have liked to have heard years before now. She had been a dedicated student, there was no one in Nevarra that could deny that, for all her faults. She may have been more than a little vocal in her frustrations with Chantry limitations on study and medicine, but most chalked that up to a childish curiosity that would die with age, when she found herself wedded and bedded and baring child. Clearly, that was not the route she intended to take. ]

If you did not intend to be my judge then what was this?

[ She motions to the animal on the table between them. ]

Did you even spare the thought, for a moment, to imagine that I might be genuine in my study? That after you had turned your attention away from me I might have found someone else to fill in the gaps? I did not come here to kill people, Ilias. I did not come here to do harm. The very fact that your first instinct upon seeing me here, a welcomed member of the Inquisition, was to make sure that I was up to your standards says more than enough about your view of me. Do you know how very cruel that is? How demeaning? Do you not think I have heard enough of it?

[ She swallows, shaking her head. ]

If I wish to further my education then the Inquisition has many healers I can speak with, all of whom will not find it a trial to spend their time with me. I would not want to waste your time as I have so clearly done before. [ Hands somewhat cleaner and tears gathering in her eyes, she blinks them back, standing up as tall as she can manage, face set in as much measure of composure as she can muster.

It could be better, but, well. Ilias knows her. It makes it harder to pretend. ]

Are we done with your tests? Might I return to my station now?

open | tracks will fade in the snow

no subject

crawls determinedly back here

grips ur hands