faderift | open | then in the pounding of my heart

Entry tags:

open | then in the pounding of my heart

WHO: Myr & you!
WHAT: new eyes who dis
WHEN: Throughout Harvestmere, backdated to the team's return from the Abbey on the White Cliffs.
WHERE: The Gallows & Kirkwall
NOTES: potential cautionary cw for trauma & gore mentions

Their return was no triumphant one. What had started hopeful for alliance and aid from the Abbey on the White Cliffs had collapsed under the weight of the horror there and taken so many lives with it. One of the Inquisition's own is dead. A potential ally is lost. And a power from beyond the rifts has warped the world past bearing, making plain once more the awful danger rifters themselves could be.

As for Myr, subject to a miracle hidden in the heart of the whole thing--

He doesn't hide from his friends in the Inquisition, exactly. Doesn't shirk his duty or vanish into his quarters. But while he's often there in body there's some part of him missing in spirit, curled in on itself to reflect on what had happened.

i.

He spends his first full day back in the Gallows undoing his locator glyphs, one by one.

They could simply be unsnarled all at once without him walking the halls; he could have done it the moment he set foot on the Gallows' docks. But he has not seen the ugly place in person but for flashes granted by the Provost; he doesn't know the look of the halls, only how the glyphs stand in relation to one another and the sound of their chiming. Their removal, but for a handful, is a chance to learn his home of the past year by sight.

He pauses often, especially by inhabited rooms; he listens to echoes and sometimes stares concerningly long at a doorframe or a wall or a bit of tapestry. Sometimes it's with a look of puzzlement; sometimes with no look at all, his mind occupied with other troubles. He's surely run into someone in all that distraction.

ii. a.

The commission to head up the Chantry Relations project had been waiting for him on his return, piled up among his other correspondence. He'd not ever seen the seal on it before but it was different from the others in the pile and so he broke it open to read, in a halting way.

It took him three re-readings to fully comprehend the letter and set it gently back down atop the pile of its fellows.

"So that's why," he remarks to the air (or anyone outside the open door). "That's why You put me there."

From the first to the very awful last of it, miracle included. He makes a small helpless noise that might be a laugh or a sob.

b. (for Cade)

Of course, he began packing immediately--what there was to pack; much of what he'd kept in the Rifts and the Veil office was proper to that project and not his at all. There are Procedures and Forms to these things, though for the life of him they're all out of order in his head right now and all that remains is he needs to occupy the space allotted him.

He did remember at least to send a message to Cade--that he was back in the Gallows, that they'd be in a new office now--though somehow it slipped his mind to mention he didn't need help urgently for the move, being quite able to find his way between rooms with laden arms now.

iii.

It isn't all for sorrow. Whatever the cost of it, he'd been given a gift he couldn't not use; and slowly, as Harvestmere wears on, he grows into the joy of seeing again.

One morning is better than the others: He rises before dawn and goes for a run about the Gallows, flat out in a way he's not been able to for years. In no fit shape for it but game to push himself, he manages a lap at that pace and a second at a slower, before settling on the stairs down to the docks to watch the light break over the windless water.

"Good morning," he greets the first person who walks near him, smile bright. "D'you know, I didn't think the sea could be that still. It never feels it, riding across."

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It's not a particularly large office, as these things go. Or perhaps, it's because the office is split in two, with two desks, one of which is a little dusty, if otherwise clear. The other is covered in papers, most neatly stacked, one stack fallen and sprawled to show that every page in it is a charcoal drawing of some small thing or another; a pot, a knife, a bit of masonwork carving. They're labeled too, with numbers and words, though not in common. Sorrel straightens the fallen stack as he crosses past the desk.

"I don't need your permission to steal your food," He reminds Myr, sliding around to take a seat. And a scone the moment they'e in range. Priorities.

And then he looks at Myr expectantly. Well?

"It isn't stealing if I give you permission, and thus all your wickedness is undone before it begins." It's a daring thing, teasing someone he's not quite friends with on said not-quite-friend's own territory before asking about said not-quite-friend's gods in a setting bound to make all that a little fraught.

But Myr's been under a cloud these past few weeks and after that much gloom his bounce back to himself was bound to be a little--exuberant. He takes a seat after Sorrel does and immediately proffers the scones for the taking. (Sparing a glance for the drawings as well; making a note to, maybe, if the time seems right, ask after them later. Art like that isn't one of his talents at all and so he admires it all the more.)

"I don't know the Creators well at all," he begins, at Sorrel's look. "Only what's passed about in the alienage or whatever," distorted, "accounts the Chantry censors would let into a Circle library. I don't know how you worship them or how they touch your lives except you always have them with you." He gestures to his own naked face by way of emphasis.

"Given my position, I think we're all ill-served by my ignorance. So I'd like to know more."

"Given your p—"

Sorrel has a moment of surreal unreality. A devotee to the much-hated Chantry, a good little flat-eared circle mage, is asking him. About the creators. This is almost certainly going to turn into mockery.

And, come to think of it, had he always had eyes? Sorrel didn't know Myr well, had never seen him socially, but he was fairly sure the man had been blind before. How do you bring that up? Oh hello sorry, I noticed you have eyes?

Mother Mythal beyond the veil, preserve us from this shit.

"Well," Sorrel begins, and then stops because he hardly knows where to do so. He covers for the awkwardness of the moment by taking another scone, "...It's not like that, for starters. Look, I don't know a great deal about the Chant, or the Andrastian thing— mostly because I don't care."

Which is true, he doesn't. Sorrel feels that he knows all he needs to, about the Chantry.

"But the thing we have in common is, mostly, our gods aren't here anymore. And definitely not always with us, I hope. Where do you even want to begin? Most people start off with all this before they can even walk, with the stories and legends."

Myr hadn't come into this expecting caring, or--any kind of ecumenical spirit beyond whatever he brought with him (and to be fair, it wasn't much of one; if he had his druthers worship of the Creators would be relegated to those same books and the Dalish brought into a fold that is hopefully, Maker and Your Bride give your servants the strength to do it, far more welcoming than it heretofore has been for anyone with pointed ears); so he's hardly put out by not receiving any.

Instead, he picks up one of the scones and considers it along with exactly how to frame his own question. "I suppose," he says, once he's decided on which corner to bite off his scone first, "what you mean by mostly your gods aren't around anymore."

It tugs at a certain string in his little heretic heart, so of course it's what he'd chase after. Not that anyone in the Inquisition needs to know that (though given his own lack of caution and how much he wears that heart on his sleeve--but let it bide; that's something to deal with going forward).

"Alright," Sorrel says, "But, only because you brought food."

It's a joke, he'd have told you anyways, but probably not as frankly.

"In ancient Arlathan, when the world was new, the gods walked among the People and we never grew old," Sorrel spreads his hands over the desk, as if presenting a banquet, or the spread of a city between them, an impossible city of shining light and silver spires, "The Creators were never the only of the gods, only they were ours, and we theirs, but they were forever at odds with their rivals, the Forgotten Ones. The greatest punishment in the world is to be forgotten, and so we do not even know their names, only that they warred with the Creators. And of course, there was Fen'Harel."

One hand, a fist now, in contrast to the Forgotten over here, and the Creators over there. A lone figure, almost lonely, though rarely alone.

"The Dread Wolf. He was one of the Creators, they trusted him as a brother, but also he was friends to the Forgotten ones. Truly, he was loyal to neither. That is why the word for betrayer, for liar, is harellan, because he tricked them all, and locked them away in a prison, far Beyond where any mortal could walk, the Forgotten and Creators both together. And since then they have vanished from the world, and took our immortality with them," Sorrel paused, palms flat on the desk now, "The only one of the gods still with us, is the one who betrayed them all. The Dread Wolf, the great traitor, the god of tricks and lies, and who's teeth catch the unwary. The one by who's name we curse our enemies. So I'll just hope he's not always with us, if it's all the same to you, da'len."

Sorrel sat back with a shrug and a lopsided grin.

"...Or at least that's how I tell it to little ones. That's the simplest version, easy to remember and understand."

Joke it might be, but Myr makes a mental note of it nevertheless (third room clockwise, fourth floor, plate of scones: always feed Sorrel first) because: You don't give up an advantage like that.

Or maybe he likes making people happy and as any alienage elf can tell you, there's few better inducements toward happiness than a full belly.

He sits up attentive as Sorrel starts in on the story, keeping his thoughts to himself as he handily demolishes his scone. (Thoughts like: they're not entirely Forgotten, because there'd been names in Morrigan's haul from the Tirashan; and, but Mythal is loose, isn't she? --While he'd like answers to those questions, he's too aware they're the upending of something sacred that perhaps he's no right to ask about, not here or now or over breakfast.)

He listens--he absorbs, and when Sorrel's done telling Myr returns that lopsided grin with one of his own. "It might be too late for that," he says, mock-solemn. "The not being with you part--I think my cousin's named for him."

And he'd prefer Vandelin stay around exactly always, thanks very much. "I'm torn," he continues then, sobering only a little, "between asking for all the rest like you'd tell them to the little ones, or asking for the more complex version." Where do you want to take this? lies implicit in his indecision, as he picks up another scone to inspect.

If they aren't forgotten, and if Sorrel knew, he would say only that it would be better for all if they were. There were worse things than demons in the world, for all that most never saw them.

And as for Mythal... Well. Complicated stories are for adults. And the story of Asha'bellanar is stranger than most.

"All the rest would take years to tell. I was trained to be a Keeper, one day, and while I don't know everything there is," Sorel shrugged helplessly, "There's a lot that isn't everything. Ask me a question, you have to have a lot of why in you, if you're actually coming to ask instead of just making up stories or trying to see what lies Genitivi wrote down, when he was told them."

"Admittedly," Myr says, breaking off a piece of scone to make his next bite, "I'd not mind showing up Genitivi at something; it'd be a feather in any scholar's cap. But not with anything sacred to any part of the People."

There's things you don't trifle with just to make an academic point; they aren't his gods but they are someone's. "Though I've got enough why to keep us here until we go grey, so consider yourself warned. All right: Why would the Dread Wolf do such a thing? Just for spite or is there more to the story than that?"

"My Keeper always told it that he did it for power's sake, which makes sense, doesn't it? One god of a dozen, and then suddenly you're all there is? That's not half a promotion. I've also heard it for spite, there's lots of stories about Fen'Harel's laughter echoing for centuries afterward, like he did it for pride, what with the way he sort of... preys on people. Like a big kill, it's something he'd be proud of. But, really, you want to know the truth?"

Sorrel waits just long enough to get the nod, because of course you do. Why else would you come here? Sorrel takes another two scones, in addition to the half-finished one he's currently chewing through. He doesn't need them, you see; he wants them.

"Truth is, it depends who you ask. You've got to understand, Myr, everything we know about Arlathan that we didn't learn from ruins and artifacts," A gesture for his own office, and its purpose. Whatever the Inquisition tells itself, Sorrel is not here for them alone, "It all comes through the slave-markets in Tevinter, which is where the people of Arlathan ended up, without the Gods. They don't exactly let slaves keep libraries, after all. And then later, we lost even more when the Dales fell, and more every decade when some clan or another vanishes. So, if anyone ever knew why for sure, in a way no-one could argue with, they probably died knowing it."

It was a nice, dramatic moment. Sorrel punctuated it with a large bite, and the pause to chew.

"Don't publish that. I'll find you," It's joke, but also... Yes, the threat is real enough, underneath, "It's the great Dalish Secret. That we might damn well know more than anyone else, but we don't know everything."

Edited 2018-11-10 02:45 (UTC)

It's not what Myr had been expecting to hear--certainly not what he'd been hoping to hear, with all the innocence of a bright-eyed city elf kid who'd been fed glowing stories of his wild cousins--but at the same time it's not a surprise now that he's come to know the Dalish a little better. Elves live on the margins anywhere they're still permitted to live; if any of them had any kind of continuity whatever, a place and a chance to build up the sort of society that could hold on to their full history as long as shems could...

Well, they'd not all be in the state they are now, would they? He looks from Sorrel's face down at the crumbs of his latest scone, composing his expression to hide the brief flash of disappointment. (Knowing better doesn't change how it feels to hear.) Once he has, he glances back up again, smile back in place but decidedly lopsided. "I'd never; what shem would believe me?" he retorts. "Centuries of them fantasizing about Dalish mystique and you don't know everything? They'd be such fools for having been led on so."

There's a certain respect in his tone though it's leavened with sorrow out of place with his smile. Slaves don't keep libraries, and how much better were the children of those slaves doing to this day? Keeping only a little ahead of the entropy that had sintered apart nations and peoples more mighty than theirs.

At least they could keep everyone ignorant of just how bad it was. That's something in and of itself.

"But to speak of the Dread Wolf--if he'd gone through all that trouble just to be the only god, what would he get out of it? Or--" Myr frowns briefly, chewing on his lower lip as he reformulates the question. "--that's to say, why did you--do you--honor your gods? Why did they ask you to?"

"Because they're ours? Come on, I said it before; the Creators walked among us."

It had been the first line of the story. Sorrel seems to think that ought to explain it well enough, but after a moment he sees that you're not getting it.

"...Alright, think about it like this. What does the Empress of Orlais want?" He spreads both hands, flat, palm-up, to illustrate the impossibility of answering that question, "Maybe, to raise an army? Or to see justice done. Or maybe, to see Orlais prosper and grow? Lots of things. The Creators aren't like The Maker, they didn't live in some other place and talk to people only with visions and dreams, they lived here, among The People. They could walk the Fade as easily as any spirit, true, but they also were part of the world. They probably asked people to do a lot of things, and people did them; and why wouldn't they? The creators were what made us great, and powerful, and free. Without them, look at what elves have come to."

But from that expression, he doesn't have to. Sorrel's seen the alienages, and while he'd never wish the violence the Dalish see on anyone, he can't say he'd trade his life for one inside those walls.

"We have a lot of traditions, about the hunt, prayers, the right way to butcher a kill. We don't hunt hares or halla, if we have any choice, because they're sacred to Andruil. We don't hunt wolves in much the same fashion. We have stone wolves to guard the camps, and we use the Dread Wolf's name in curses; he's still one of ours, even if he hates us. He's still a Creator, even if he hates them. Or are you really just trying to ask about the Vallaslin?"

"And the Maker walked beside Andraste," Myr retorts lightly, "but we don't take that bit of the Chant quite literally since He'd have left a trail of blinded, stricken mortals in His wake if He'd been seen."

And probably prevented all the sorrow that came after since there's few things to compel belief like the actual presence of the Source of All, but leave that aside. The point's made: They're coming from different frames, and it's not first nature for Myr to think of divinity that way. Still, he listens politely--more than polite, attentive and curious--to the answer he asked for.

"I suppose I am," he says to Sorrel's final question, thoughtfully. "But also--if a powerful mage were to come among you, claiming she was one of the Creators returned," Mythal, say, to use no example in particular, relevant to nothing whatsoever, "what would you look for to measure the truth of that claim?"

There's a breath of a pause, not really quite enough to wedge a word into, before he adds, "Because the way we'd know the Maker and Andraste are back among us on Thedas is this world ends for the next one. Which the Dread Wolf's already done, hasn't he?"

Not in a way that worked out nearly so well for his People as the Maker's return was supposed to, but a world had ended all the same.

"You're talking about someone specific now," Sorrel notes, and nods to acknowledge the wrinkle it puts in his argument. Ashabellanar adds wrinkles to every bloody thing though, and it is seemingly her function in the world to do so, "If you're asking me to tell you some foolproof way of knowing the difference between a god in hiding and a talented charlatan, then you're looking for a way to make the world always do what's expected of it, and fit into easy little lists. That's not how reality works, that's a fairytale for children. The only real way to know if someone is what they say they are, is to watch and see how they act."

People, even really good liars, eventually break the lie, because they are lying for a reason. If someone was claiming to be a god, they would have to back up that lie with some form of reality, and if a mage had enough power to truly transcend death, to command the power over creation, to forge the world anew and control the very veil...

...What is a god? If the form and function fit, then who cares about the origin?

"What the Dread Wolf did was a betrayal. The world didn't end, if you notice the last ten thousand-odd years having happened: it changed. For us it was for the worst, but for the shems it was a blessing. You ought to think more outside yourself, if you want to know what I think."

"Not at all. I'm asking what it is you'd look for to convince yourself one way or another--how would one of the Creators act? What marks a god apart?"

There are two scones left. Myr considers them both before picking up the smaller of the pair and industriously reducing it to bite-sized pieces. Sorrel's last comment wins a snort of amusement from him. "You're being disagreeable for the sake of it," he points out, mildly. "The world won't be annihilated at the Maker's return, either, but it won't be the world we knew. That's an ending. Especially for those who throve off injustice."

Speaking of shems. He sets the last chunk of scone down atop the pile of its fellows and studies Sorrel thoughtfully. "You make it sound as if the shems owe the Dread Wolf a debt of gratitude," he continues. "That the Creators wouldn't've let them grow into themselves at all, let alone what they've done to us."

"And if a leader turns against his people like that, and brings them to ruin, then he ought not to complain when they still call it a betrayal."

Sorrel stops himself short, and leaves it at that; there's danger enough in all this than to invite the wrath, however superstitious, of the Dread Wolf. He still has two whole scones in front of him, in addition Myr's one and half, so he puts them back. It was fun enough, being greedy for the joke of it, but he isn't truly hungry anymore.

"It's only I thought you came in here to learn something, and this is starting to sound like you actually came to make a few sharp points about something," Sorrel tells him, quietly, pulling his hands back and away. It's not a conscious pose of threat, but it is rather wary, as if to be cautious of a biting creature, and to get one's fingers out of the way, "I don't know where you come from, Myrobalan, but ever since the fall of Arlathan, my ancestors have always been told that if they didn't roll over and agree with whatever god someone else wanted to follow, they'd just as soon be left to die. Or more likely killed."

His pronunciation is soft, crisp, and very calm so that the only real sign of his emotion is the thickening of his accent. But Sorrel isn't smiling any longer, and this isn't a children's story to him. The fairy tales about dread wolves and lost cities are fanciful indeed, but he cannot ever really forget just how many people have died to preserve them. Sorrel has no words to explain to Myr that their reality is immaterial, because the blood spilt in their preservation is enough to warrant the genocide of a people, in some eyes. In human eyes. And the scar on Sorrel's face is testament to his own experience with that.

"So you'll have to forgive me if I interpret that as something of an attack, being as traditionally, it is one."

He does not know what he's done, nor exactly what foot he's set wrong, but nevertheless Myr reads the warning in Sorrel's tone and posture clear as a darkening in the sky before a sandstorm. His own hands still--then he turns them face-up on the desk, empty-palmed, I have brought no weapon here and mean you no threat.

"Forgive me," he says very quietly, "in my zeal. I did come to understand, not judge. But now I think we're talking past each other as I've gotten fixed on something that doesn't matter.

"I do not want you dead. I do not want another Dalish elf to die because she wouldn't convert--or for any other contrived reason a shem might have to kill her. What happened to the Dales was an unimaginable betrayal of a people already wounded and it should be undone."

So, and so. He breathes out slowly to calm his own temper; looks down a moment as he gathers the rest of his thoughts, reminds himself--with a silent prayer for guidance--why he'd come here. "We should be allies, not at odds. And as I'd not turn from the Maker I will not ask you to turn from the Creators. But I do want to know how, and why, you come to know them. What they mean to you and what it means to honor them--but I see I've asked the wrong questions to do that. So."

He looks up once more, takes his hands back--does not quite make as if to leave, but there is something about him nevertheless that says if Sorrel tells him to go, he will.

Sorrel waits a moment, watching, gauging Myr's words. He doesn't know it, but right then, in that moment, Sorrel resembles no other living being so much as his mother. Keeper Deshana of the Clan Ashara was a woman who could curdle blood like cheese with a single glance, and who's regard seemed to sum up the whole of one's sins and judge them all silently. And then, she would speak.

Sorrel had her eyes. And now, he spoke:

"What it means to honor the Creators is to keep the memory of our own ways alive. To never let the shemlen define who we are or what we know to be true, and never submit to being ruled by anyone but ourselves, and our own," He says it carefully, because it is both an acceptance of the apology, and an answer to the question, "That's the difference between a city elf and a Dalish; we grow up saying we are the last of the elvhenan, and we do not submit, what we mean is that we will be free, living or dying. You've seen the Vallaslin?"

Sorrel motions at his face, at the long, jag-shaped scar across one cheek, and the little bird-rib curves of ink there, bone-white against his skin. There, once upon a time, something sharp and ugly had met skin with poor precision and torn Sorrel's face open from the corner of his mouth nearly all the way to one ear.

"We started all wearing them only really after the fall of the Dales, when we had to make the choice between submitting to shem rule, turning Andrastian, or taking the risk to starve on our own. And we decided then and there that if the shem wanted to take our gods, our choice, our freedom, they could come and skin it off us," The vow is delivered with uncommon fervency. The eye-contact has gone on, perhaps a bit too long, but Sorrel holds it a moment longer, then looks away and scrubs one palm across his cheek, a little embarrassed, "Do you think you could try and understand, why it's probably better not to ask something like what if a god isn't a god?"

"I do." The words are said quietly, but Myr's far from cowed; he meets Sorrel's gaze (had he seen those eyes elsewhere than in the other man's face, in a shared nightmare once?) for as long as it's on him.

There is much in him to judge in this, and much he's failed at. He's accustomed enough to dragging his own sins out into the firelight and burning them that he can let them be seen that way and admit culpability. (Were it a divine rather than mortal judge looking on him that way-- But let it bide.)

It's only when Sorrel looks away that he can register the scar and the tattoos it crosses; can wonder at both of them and whether someone did, indeed, mean to skin the marks off the other man. "It would have been better to ask, what will you do if they return? --Because I do believe they were here once and that you know them as well as anyone could."

His dispute, he realizes, lies less in whether they've a claim to godhood (because a god was what people named it; the Chant may call the Old Gods false but never gave them a name other than gods) than with whether they're worth worshipping at all. And that is not a dispute worth continuing now, knowing what that worship means.

"Are you asking what I'll do, or what The People will do?"

It's not a real question, although he's curious enough to know the answer. They are, after all, two very different questions with two equally separate answers.

"It would depend on how it happened, on what was done and proven, and what was promised. The Dalish aren't like other nations, we don't have a central leader; we might agree to something as a group, but actually doing what we've agreed to is up to individual clans, even individual elves in those clans. It's like herding cats, politically," Sorrel waves a hand sideways, an uncertain wobble.Who can say what the Dalish would do? Some would refuse to believe the Creators had returned until they had seen living evidence of a hundred years of Elven rule in a sovereign nation, and even then they might need to approve of the actions of such a nation before they'd unbend and believe it might last. Others were ruthless enough to follow anyone at all, if it meant they could make war against the humans wherever they encountered them, "Me, personally though? It would also depend on a lot. I've got obligations that I couldn't put aside for anything, even if I saw a Creator returned and they wanted my help and it seemed to me that they were legitimate enough to deserve it. And it's not like the gods coming back would erase all the time that's passed since the times when Arlathan ruled the world. Things are... very different now. And I think they'll always be, unless everybody who isn't an elf or a dwarf just keels over and dies one fine afternoon."

Not impossible, of course. But then, not likely either. Stranger things have happened, maybe, but nothing quite so destructive as that; Sorrel isn't holding his breath.

"That's not much of an answer, but I also don't believe in prophecy so it's the best you'll get."

"Both," Myr replies, promptly. "Though I s'pose it's the latter that I should be most worried about."

Seeing as the whole of the Dalish people up and deciding to do something like follow after their ancient gods would be of concern to the Chantry. Though it sounds, from Sorrel's description, that that's as remote a possibility as the human and Vashoth populations winking out of existence all of a sudden. "I'd not say that's too unlike the Marches," tongue firmly in cheek, "or how they describe us elsewhere, anyway."

Though truthfully Marchers would follow the leaders of their own city without much quibble (or option not to); it's just when it came to anyone else the going got dicey... "Much of an answer or not, that does straighten things out--so thank you for it."

Things are very different now. Well--but that hadn't kept any other revenant mages with a vision of how the world should be from trying to run roughshod over it. Myr wisely does not share that thought; instead, nudges the plate and its remaining scones toward Sorrel with a finger. You can have them back.

"Whose blood-writing d'you wear, while we're on the subject of it?" He pauses once the words are out of his mouth, chagrined. "--That's not rude to ask, is it?"

"You're worried about the possibility a general Dalish uprising," Sorrel laughs, only slowly catching on when Myr says should be most worried, "And you're asking the half-exiled maybe-First for military information? You ought to be worried about more things in general. If the People decide they've finally had enough, nobody's getting advanced warning, least of all me."

Blood Writing. That was the word, truly, as Myr said it, and not for the first time Sorrel has a lurch of who before remembering Genitivi and wanting to go back and punch someone from Ralaferin for their trouble. Compassion and mercy, and this was what always come of it; not that he wasn't doing exactly the same, even now.

"Dirth'amen," Sorrel replies, shortly, ignoring the scones; to forgive is one thing, but the Dalish aren't much known for ever forgetting, "It's not rude to ask, exactly. But it is kind of personal."

There’s a luxury about having eyes that Myr had forgotten and that’s you can roll them—which he does at Sorrel’s retort, though there’s good humor in the gesture. “Most worries about of the two options I’m presented with,” he clarifies, laughingly. “If you want my real list of worries and where exactly ‘general Dalish uprising’ ranks on it we’ll be here the rest of the day.”

He looks down again at the abandoned plate of scones in the no man’s land between them, his briefly antic smile fading from his face. “Though I admit I’m more worried for you should anyone,” see: the Chantry, “get the idea that’s a possibility.”

Likely though they neither need nor want a flat-ear’s expressed concern. He folds his hands neatly before him and looks up at Sorrel once more. It is kind of personal wins an odd, sad smile out of him. “Then shall I not pursue that any further?”

Edited (mmmm reconsidered being too forward) 2018-11-20 14:09 (UTC)

"Even if something like that were to happen, they'd hardly tell a half-exiled Dalish First who's done little but act like a fool and practically sell himself to the shemlen Inquisition," Sorrel replies shortly, and tips his head sharply to punctuate the point. Not a nod, not a disagreement, only a little cock of the chin as if to say and there you have it: I'm useless to everyone, not just you, "But the burden of having to make up a conspiracy out of nothing has never stopped anyone from attacking the Dalish. More than one clan has died that way."

The Dales itself, died that way.

"It's not that I don't like you," Sorrel temporizes, although if asked outright, he didn't, "But I don't know you. And even I did, I certainly don't know you enough to go on a weird hours-long journey about my years-long religious soul-searching."

Myr's expression flattens, gone quiet and considering at Sorrel's at a half-exiled Dalish first. His look isn't a pitying one, exactly, but there's worry to it-- One mention in passing might be held at arm's length to consider the truth of; two in close succession says another thing again about Sorrel's assessment of himself.

They haven't been on the same footing this whole conversation, Myr thinks, and here he'd been playing his own unease off with humor and missing the more important subtext the while. More care's required, next time.

If there is a next time.

(Practically sell himself to the shemlen Inquisition. Maker's breath and bones, that sentiment augured ill.)

"No, it hasn't," he agrees, quietly. "But I didn't come round to speak to you for fuel for rumors. Just there's a very great deal I don't understand about the Dalish," other than from tainted sources, other than a scared kid's hopeful imaginings, "and I don't think I help anyone by remaining ignorant."

Especially not if this is anything to go on. He takes the implicit rebuke as given, not--laughing, not shrugging it off or turning up a palm to let the whole idea go, simply nodding in response. "Understood. I'd not presume to ask that of you had I known."

"No," Sorrel says shortly, in agreement. It helps no one to remain ignorant; whether or not that's preferable to what help Myr might be when armed with knowledge, and to whom, is another question. Sorrel sits quietly for a moment, considering the paper under his hands, and the angle of the light in the room. Deep breath in, hold it, and then... let it go.

"Understand I'm not mad at you, anymore," Because, and only because, he had apologized. Pride had its place, and dignity, but respect was most necessary, always, "But what you're trying to put out as innocent curiosity can get people killed. I'm sure it's best for you to learn, but I'm not so sure you won't turn around and report everything to someone else who'll care less about offending someone than getting all these filthy, diseased knife-ears away from someone's pretty estate."

A shrug, one-shouldered. Evil. You work for it, Myr, whether or not you believe that that is its true form, it's been the face of that organization since soon after its inception, from Sorrel's perspective.

"So, ask whatever you like. I'll answer if I think I can. I don't know where to begin, or what it would take to satisfy you."

open | then in the pounding of my heart

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changes icon keyword to "contemplating scone.jpg"

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finally excavates my own writing ability from the grave it died in

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because of course there's a thedosian sartre, how could there not be

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