open | keep holding on

[swordproof]

WHO: Six and anyone else!
WHAT: Training, praying, studying, horsing
WHEN: Throughout the month
WHERE: Kirkwall (Gallows, training grounds, library)
NOTES: N/A

» TRAINING » GALLOWS

Training is a regular use of time for Six, unchanged since her dream, waking with some of the burdens removed from her shoulders. She still has Adrian's sword and she knows that, eventually, she'll have to get around to dealing with the weight of it. She knows that she'll have to bury it again here, that she'll have to find a suitable resting place, but it isn't something that is pressing on her currently. There are more important things to consider, more important things to do, especially with a sister to take care of and a dog to consider.

Two, the ever dutiful Mabari, settles near Six, head tilted to one side and tongue out as he dozes, content to let his mistress do as she will until it's his turn.

For the most part, Six spends her time with the familiar greatsword, swinging her weapon with ease, content to lift it and tear apart the training dummies as she has done almost every day since she had first woke here. Her strength is more than it had been before and it shows with the ease that she lifts her blade; it seems as though she's not carrying a two handed blade at all. It comes with a decade of practice and she's aware that it's something she has worked for - her pride is obvious as she takes a break to rest. Other times, she can be found with a longsword in her hand and a shield in another, practicing carrying the both - it's not her favoured weapon, but it's clear she has a decent amount of skill with it all the same.

Eventually, she abandons her own weapons training and takes her mabari to one side, summoning Two over. She can be found walking with him, moving with him, adjusting them both to the feeling of walking side by side, until she stops and breaks into a laugh, leaning down to scratch at his ears gently, whispering gentle words.

» STUDYING » LIBRARIES

The library isn't somewhere that Six has spent a great deal of time, but she knows her way around enough to know to avoid the seats of common regulars. She's not here to read too much that might get in the way of others, at least, and when she moves around the room she does it with proper respect to anyone who might be sitting and reading themselves, stepping around them quietly. She doesn't stand out as much as she usually might; her armour has been left in her room, the amulet of Sarenrae around her neck instead.

The books she chooses are those relating to Andraste, the Chantry and religion of the world, and she sits quietly with those for the better part of a few hours, an intense expression on her face as she does what she can to learn, taking notes on a piece of parchment at her side. Sometimes she will read about Tevinter, she will study what happened there, frowning at the paper.

When she's not reading, she's still making notes, but this is all in a very foreign looking language. Sometimes she whispers the words aloud to herself and they don't sound very natural, even coming from her mouth, her head tilting as she tests them. She's clearly fluent, but practice doesn't hurt and she wants to make sure she doesn't lose her third language, no matter what the risks. Elven is easy enough to remember, but Draconic? That's something else entirely.

» PRAYING » KIRKWALL GARDENS

When she's not training, Six has found a place in the garden that suits her for the praying she does every single day. She's well aware that there's no way for Sarenrae to respond to her here - she doesn't exist, she's not a real God here, there's only the Creators or Andraste or the Qun, all of which she knows too little to consider following - but she cannot give up her prayers. She kneels, usually facing a wall, her hands clasped around her holy symbol and her lips moving silently as she says words in a very quiet whispers.

Sometimes, she's there for hours, kneeling, Two at her side as a gentle guard dog, her hair tied up in the familiar bun. She doesn't move when people walk through the garden, focussed entirely on the familiar words, her fingers brushing over and over the metal around her neck. When she stops to pause she lifts herself up and walks around the garden, stretching her legs with Two trotting along beside her. Sometimes she tests his commands, asking him to sit, or lie, or heel, and always given him gentle warmth and encouragement when he does.

Eventually, she will always go back to her prayers, offering thanks and dutiful words to her Goddess, no matter what anyone else - whatever religion they might be - would think of her for it.

» WILDCARD

( Feel free to find Six around / in her room / etc or ping me on plurk for something personal! )

Comments

[swordproof]

"I think faith is a choice. No one can force you to believe in anything, no matter what it might be. I did not have to follow the path I did, the God that I chose, but I decided to offer her my faith. It should be the same for the people of Thedas, no matter what the rest of this world might think of them." Her hand lifts, carefully, brushing gently over the weight of her amulet around her neck. The symbol is obvious, even with her thumb pressing into it gently.

Faith is so important to her and she can recognise that in the depth of people's worship of the Maker and Andraste. It makes sense to her, but she wonders if that is because faith is easy for someone desperate or because she has heard the words of Sarenrae in her mind, gently and soft.

"Do you think he would share some information with me, if I asked? Not the secrets, but the history." She's not going to press an order for their secrets - she was a Paladin, she can understand the need for quiet, especially with God-given powers - but she is curious. She respects them, can see something of herself in them, and she would like to learn more. She's curious; it's part of the reason she had run off with Adrian and abandoned her mercenaries in the first place.

"Ser Alistair, Ser Coupe and Ser Norrington." Six seems to be memorising the names. "I've spoken to Ambassador Amsel about the Chantry, but any more knowledge I can be given would be welcome."

The rest, though, makes her pause, and she frowns just a little.

"The Blight I have heard of. I've fought a handful of the Darkspawn. I have not heard much of the Archdemons."

[foxsays]

"Ah, I don't have a god or gods, I have the sea. When a thing is your blood and won't stop being your blood, when you know that it's the lifeblood of the whole world it paints it in a different light I think, or that's how I've come to see it since coming here where there is a god, a prophet, or gods, or the Qunari philosophies. The Stone for the dwarves." A moment of hesitation but that should be all of them, or she thinks, hopes outside cults which are something else entirely and it's not bad to start straightening that out when there wasn't anything at all like that for her not three years ago. With a hand going to brush her hair back and adjust an earring, one finger points to the amulet. "Is that yours? Your god?"

Each day is a school day after all.

"I think he would, granted he does have an odd sense of humour about him but he's a good man. I don't know too many others that I'd recommend who'd speak about Warden matters first. Oh and there's Warden Serra too, she was the leader of Rifts and the Veil until a short time ago, you might try her, I've always found her to be open about matters and I think there's some solidarity that some mages and rifters might feel towards one another though obviously I can't say how far it extends in all ways." Inessa had always seemed fair with her about things, even in the tension that had followed after the negotiations announcements when the loyalties and boundaries had started to show themselves once again. And sometimes if you have to nudge-- Well, mages perhaps can see themselves in a rifter. See a what-if.

Tipping her head back, Araceli clicks her tongue as she dredges up what little she'd learnt. After all there had been concerns about Corypheus, his dragon (no, she won't think about Minrathous, the ship, the Venatori) and if it might be one-- "Archdemons are in the Deep Roads and...and the Darkspawn they go looking for them. Down in the Deep Roads. And Archdemons look like tainted dragons - the only thing I can think of is what Corypheus has but I don't know if his is or not - and when they do find one, the Archdemon wakes, the Darkspawn are lead up and out of the Deep Roads, and that's when a Blight starts. What makes the Blight so dangerous is that you can only end it one way: killing the Archdemon."

[swordproof]

Six understands the call of the sea - it was something her father had missed for a long time. A sailor who lost himself to marriage and children, who never found his way back. It had made him angry and she had taken the brunt of it.

"That is what Sarenrae is to me. She is my blood, something that will never leave me. It does not matter that I cannot feel her here, that she is not present - I know that when I sleep she is in my dreams, that when I return home she will be there to guide me, to love me. She is all that I could have ever asked for, all that I have ever needed." Other than Adrian, but that is a pain not worth discussing. He had loved Sarenrae as well, and that had brought them together, united in affection and faith together.

At least the rest of the conversation is easy enough.

"I believe I have met Warden Serra, though I think Warden Alistair and I have not had much room to speak in depth. I will try to meet with them both." It's worth it, especially since her last arranged meeting had worked in her favour. It's not as though she is demanding their secrets or attempting to push herself into their order; she simply wishes to understand, to recognise the history, to know more of this place. She doesn't think that there's too much she can be blamed for, at least not in that.

Nose wrinkling, she shakes her head.

"I've killed Darkspawn," she admits, without much arrogance. "But I think I will learn more of these Archdemons, the Blights, the Dragons. I can speak their language - perhaps it shall translate here."

[foxsays]

"You believe you'll go home?" It slips out unbidden, a touch sad and surprised that there are people who still think that. The divide of who knows what about what they are or who even believes it especially in light of a night spent drinking with Cosima where the subject had come up at length.

Her brow furrows, hands curling with the urge to touch her tattoos (anchor and compass over the right wrist, her humpback whale swimming on the right shoulder, above her heart where waves crest within the moon) and up rises the memory of her worst fear confided, realised. "I can't imagine that, I'm so sorry. There was a time when we were in Skyhold far from the sea when I'd never been away from it a day in my life that I thought it might forget me. That I'd skip off it like a stone. I'm glad that you can take comfort in the knowledge you have and having something of her-" a gesture to the amulet, awkward, embarrassed to speak of it having dredged up things she'd thought she'd forgotten herself.

"I don't think dragons speak here, I think Korrin would've said something she gets this hundred mile stare where all she sees is the dragon when she sees it--" her hand plucks a silver chain to tug half a dragon's tooth out from under her shirt by way of explanation. "I've managed to avoid Darkspawn all the time I've been here, I'm not fond of caves or underground and that's where most of them tend to be. Doesn't it shred your voice to speak the way a dragon does? I heard one shrieking in the Western Approach, I felt as if I couldn't move my legs and it wasn't close to me, far up on a great ledge taking flight but the sound cut through me in a way few things have."

It's a little awed, no one has ever said they can speak dragon language. Other languages or raise the dead or enchant items but to speak to dragons or understand them, that's something else entirely. Even if her face might want to be upset at the notion.