faderift | ( open ) your destiny is forlorn

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( open ) your destiny is forlorn

WHO: Herian Amsel & OPEN.
WHAT: a few open threads & a catch all, basically.
WHEN: throughout Harvestmere
WHERE: probably mostly Kirkwall
NOTES: prose or brackets are fine.

I. THE ALIENAGE.

Since her appointment as the Ambassador and managing projects in need of new leadership, she has not been to the Alienage nearly so often as she'd like, or enough to satisfy the her duties. Now with Saoirse departed, it is all the more pressing that she attend. Less to do with the idea that this might somehow be a boon to the Inquisition, and far more to do with her own wants, the need to maintain some connection to the Alienage, even though it is not the one where she grew up.

So, here she is, assisting a collection of Chantry sisters and brothers who remain committed and enthusiastic about assisting with education in the Alienage and in Darktown, and here she will be as often as she is able to without neglecting her duties to the Inquisition.

A. On some days, Herian can be found with dirt under her nails and rubbed across her skin, as she helps with teaching how to do repairs, and helping with repairs in the process.

B. On others, she is accepting papers with efforts at writing, smiling at the student handing it over - some young, some old - and speaking with the Chantry brother who is collecting some ink wells and pens from the make-shift classroom they are clearing up.

II. THE GALLOWS WALLS.

Dusk has faded way, the sky turned inky blue and the stars shining through, where the weather allows. Herian sits atop the Gallows ramparts, clad not in the more formal attire she wears in her office, nor the light armour she might don for missions. Now she is only in simple leather trousers, a dark green cotton shirt with ties that descend from shoulder to wrist, as she sides on the wall and looks down over the bay to Kirkwall, and the Gallows courtyard, candles nearby - perhaps not immediately recognisable as the controlled and severe Knight Enchanter.

It is a vigil, of sorts, or maybe a meditation, to try and give her mind a chance to order itself.

Perhaps she is singing the Chant, or perhaps she simply watches and listens.

III. THE BATHS.

Her muscles protest the sink into the hot water, but it is a welcome relief. Tattoos stretch across her skin, intricate patterns on either side of her spine and down her arms, follow her collarbones, and scars have distorted the skin. These are not matters of shame or concern, she is untroubled if others see them, as she closes her eyes and tries to knead at her shoulders to help them recover from training. It felt harder to keep up with her training and not suffer for it, now she was even more shackled to her desk.

There's an unholy crack from her back, and Herian makes a face. Oh, that wasn't good. That was probably going to cause a problem tomorrow.

IV. THE DIPLOMACY OFFICE.

A round table, a sleepy corgi, wild flowers in vases, and Herian probably wishing for a reprieve from writing letters. Please help her.

V. or some wildcard nonsense.

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Enter: one balding Chantry brother perhaps in the habit of borrowing troubles from tomorrow and into the next Age he won't live to see unless spite alone ensures it if only that he might throw them all in the face of someone else. Clad all in roughspun with a scrape along his left cheek, beneath the eye mottled the ugly yellow of a healing bruise.

Kirkwall is an unkind place. There are many ways a Chantry brother might have come by a bruise.

"Knight-Enchanter." The earliest convenience, a title more comfortable to him than Ambassador, the familiarity of the roles in a life before the chaos when there was still a Divine to keep the world in check. "If I'm not interrupting? We were to speak of Diplomacy's role in Chantry Relations, at least to start with." He knows he's not interrupting, this is the allotted time but there are habits and rituals, same as he'd knock a door to ask Magda or Abigail, deference due to a woman of rank no matter how it sours his stomach.

"Good morrow, Brother Deacon. Thank you very much for your attendance." A respectful bow, as well.

She does not love all about the Chantry; that does not mean he cannot be afforded respect and treated with dignity. The bruising on his face gives her pause. There are many ways to come by such injuries, especially here, and as she moves from her desk she gestures to the round table closer to the door. "Please, sit."

They have much to discuss. "Have you been well?"

"I've rid my room of the...excess." A mildly amused pause; they've company here who no doubt believe they've cause to complain regarding the accommodations in finding them lacking, those who hoped to never find themselves in such a place again so he's an outlier, finding too much in one little room.

Magda's private space in Markham is smaller than this office, he can't help himself when his eyes dart about, uncomfortable with it and wondering at the odd little dog asleep there.

"I've an idea for lesson plans after speaking with rifters, newly arrived and with the Inquisition longer, on the Chant, Andraste and the Maker, the history. Things vital for them in the world that I hope might settle myself more here, give me purpose."

Her smile is small, but understanding. "I still find it very strange to be surrounded by so much." From Alienage to Circle to travelling knight, possessions had been few and far between. She gestures to the office around her and exhales. It is simpler than when Petrana was houses here, laid out practically, but that doesn't change the fact that she meets with people here, and that demands a degree of things which can impress. "I am still learning what it is to be a diplomat."

But she leans forward, interested. "I imagine that could be very valuable. I would be glad of your expertise and time, Brother. Can you tell me more of your ideas?"

"We've a great number who have so little, it--" Well that too troubles him. Markham's Chantry is not so grand as others for all that Markham is a cultured city with a university to its name, not a gilded home for Deacon all his life where he lived in a small cell and there's much to be found lavish here. Even stripped of what made it a Circle prior to this new occupation he can see where it began. Where the Mages grew malcontent. Where the Templars grew lax.

Oversights come of overindulgence all too often. There is a sharpess of the mind that comes with necessity.

"I believe I've finally had the time to go through all that came of the last round of negotiations a group undertook at Skyhold, those that came with concessions made by either side. The quarantine period includes a requirement for education and I'm glad to hear it, they should know about Thedas to risk alarming the people - we must both be able to agree that the common man and woman and their children have suffered grievously at too many hands to count, to suffer more out of ignorance is to be lax in our duties and to ask too much of them." Reasonable, quiet, hands laid out carefully. "When I arrived there were some who...spoke viciously of the people of Thedas. Who wished them to be fearful of them, rifters, believed it was what they deserved. And this Inquisition was founded by Divine Justinia, may she find peace at the Maker's side. They cannot speak ignorantly. Not as some do. Not of false gods from beyond the Fade - that is talk of the way of the Magisters."

Mostly by the time sunset has come and gone, so has Morrigan; neither she nor Kieran sleep here, there's the change in Gwenaelle's circumstances and Sundermount is a decent journey. But isolation isn't what he needs now, off sparring where he's a sending crystal, Morrigan dressed for the approaching chill.

Sundermount has a nip in the air by now, she'll be moving the herbs inside before long for those less hardy specimens at least.

"Herian." Allow her to interrupt whatever nonsense this is in her feathered hood about her head, the amused tilt of the head. "An attempt to ward off the unwanted?"

Should she be offended?

With a quiet exhale, Herian opens her eyes. "Only when the unwanted are thoughts that twist and sabotage."

It is a process, some times more effective than others. She rolls her shoulders, and straightens her back. "More a means to think, and enjoy the airs. And you? How do you fair?"

"Not so easy to purge I have found." With the grimness that can only come with knowing, with sitting up til night sloughs off the shadows to unveil a new day, fresh and pink and as unwelcome as a wailing newborn after the long hours awake. Her head tips; Herian isn't someone she can say she knows well yet isn't there a certain way that they're made, these Knight-Enchanters, these leaders, who lift it all upon their shoulders until that last weight that breaks them?

(Less kind, the things done with broken people than broken beasts.)

"Some things are settled as they will be, far beyond my hands though what comes of them...that remains to be seen. I am glad to have my answers yet-- well, I imagine you understand how little peace an answer can bring. You are recovered from recent misadventures? You, Coupe, Thranduil? I imagine that decision to allow three of four to be sent off in such a way will be examined after almost ending up in the belly of the beast."

"I'm afraid you are right," she acknowledges, with a faint smile. The wind pulls at the cotton shirt, at her hair hanging long past her shoulders. As unknown as she is to Morrigan, Morrigan is unfamiliar to her. Dear to Gwenaëlle, but an apostate. It felt so long ago, that she had such firm and steady views on what that meant, and what the Circles had been. It is as though—

she has had come change in her. Circles were not flawed inherently, but they should be so much better than they had been. Perhaps condemning apostates for their grasping at freedom was not as righteous as she had once believed it. Perhaps they were not reckless and selfish, but simply had opportunities others had not, had different duties they had to dedicate themselves to.

It is not a comfortable thought, still, but it is one she has been trying to make herself consider more readily.

The conversation brings her back to the present. "We were very fortunate for Scoutmaster Ashara's swift action to send aid, and to have so many capable hands alongside us. I do not... regret attending, and I think we would be poor leaders to readily send others where we would not tread ourselves, but..."

She tilts her head, acknowledging. Things could have gone much more poorly.

"The more bitter the tea, the easier sleep will come. I have long brewed my own from that which I gather from about me and I would swear by it long before whatever perfumed nonsense they sell in towns or cities." Orlesian tea is a strange and terrible thing, most of all the one that comes in a glass pot where half won't even drink it, only watching the great ugly desiccated flower unfurling to a quiet smattering of applause. The old ways are by far the best, though Herian might still be a civilised woman.

It might smack of the Dalish and Morrigan heard of all of that.

It had been a consideration when inviting her along to the Tirashan.

"Did you see his great dragon? I recall the Archdemon. Twice I saw it. In the Deep Roads when it departed then at the final battle, even if what Corypheus has is not an Archdemon proper, I could not forget the sight of it for weeks. It haunted my dreams." At the time it had been better than the fears of motherhood though that had played a part given the ritual. "But you wish it had not been you, do you not? You need not feel guilt, all of us would think that save the fools who die too soon and you are too sensible to be the fool."

"I wish a great many things," Herian admits, after a time. "That is the nature of living, that even against our own sense and wisdom we might wish for things to be other than as they are. There is part of my that wishes I had been taken, instead of those others who suffered at the Venatoris hands. Another part of me is just relieved that I was not amongst their number, as... cowardly a thought as it is. We must be aware of our own limitations, if we are to overcome them."

Perhaps she is less reckless with her life than once she was. Recklessness and bravery, though, were not the same thing. She could feel fear and value her own life and still be brave. It was just slow realisation that she had many things to live for, that had come these past few months. What it would mean in the longer term she hardly knew, but she could only try to do her best, her bravest, when it counted.

"How did you conquer the dreams?"

"What do you imagine might have happened had you been taken? What would it have satisfied in you but misplaced guilt?" For that's all Morrigan can imagine it to be, to wish to place yourself in the cage where another is, some urge others have to take upon themselves what another receives as if it changes anything but suffering for the sake of it. Flemeth at least never instilled it in her but that which she'd take for Kieran. Motherhood is a different creature to wrestle with. "You might have been something of a different prospect had they taken you. You, Coupe, Thranduil, Ashara - what might have come had any of you been taken, you who know more than most. A cage and bars are no place for any but you are no coward to feel relief at finding yourself free of what became of others."

What shame do they teach them? Morrigan's face pulls into a frown and though the years have tempered her understanding of it, life having shaped what she knows, she does step closer to look Herian in the eye. "Survival has meaning. You are here. You are alive. You will live yet. Take solace in that."

(That Morrigan is the one to the say this might comfort few but Herian was there when Morrigan was beginning to feel the pieces of herself unravel, she can return a favour.)

"Bitter teas, working late but sleep comes. I am seldom afraid when I find myself in dreams for nothing has ever matched the reality in waking no matter how hard it might try. Laugh at it. Tell it that. That it is nothing. That you have seen far worse and it shall not best you yet. But there is little shame in tea with a friend and pouring sorrows into the lap of a trusted other."

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( open ) your destiny is forlorn

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