( open ) your destiny is forlorn

[dashing]

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.

Comments

[dashing]

"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.

[arcaneadvisor]

"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."

[dashing]

"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?"

[arcaneadvisor]

"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."