faderift | Under the Second Moon

Under the Second Moon

WHO: Everyone Ever. It's your party!
WHAT: S a t i n a l i a !
WHEN: 1st of Umbralis
WHERE: Kirkwall and the Gallows
NOTES: I volunteered as tribute but have no authority save what having like three free hours has granted me. :D

Once dedicated to the Old Goddess of Freedom, Zazikel—but now attributed more to the second moon, Satina—this holiday is accompanied by wild celebration, the wearing of masks, and naming the town fool as ruler for a day.

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The Gallows

Even tamped down by both the imminence of Corypheus's assault on Ghislain and the doleful pleading eyes of the Seneschal the Inquisition means to do its due diligence to Satinalia, its members beginning to appear fairly early on in the afternoon in anything from simple mask to full and elaborate costume, largely eager to let off some of the pressure that has been building ever since the news of the unanticipated battlefield broke.

Along with handcrafted decorations made from cunningly re-purposed bits of scrap... everything... that liven the main areas of the fortress it seems like someone has gone absolutely ham on decorations of the webbed variety. The hours can nearly be told by the yells of disgust and shrieks of surprise—and the laughter of companions—that rise above other chatter to mark yet another victim of this particularly sticky prank of an adornment.

The courtyard is the site of much preparation during the daylight hours, and then well-lit and filled with a feast that is simple but plentiful at dusk. Also plentiful: wine. Some clever person acquired an immensity of cheap horrible wine, floated some bundles of equally cheap spices in it to make the poor quality slightly less obvious, and set it to heat in a large cauldron over one of the temporary fire pits that has been constructed. It's good there's a late start tomorrow. Music is largely provided by the members of the Inquisition that make practice of it, and as a result, dancing is less an organized affair and more something that just breaks out every so often.

It is also true to its name tonight, some intrepid souls having decided that the opposite sides of it were the best places to set up the rival “throne rooms” that are mostly benches dragged into configuration in front of stacked and blanketed bales of hay. It's not much, but not much is necessary: the true decorations of the impromptu Fools' Courts are the personalities of their respective rulers, each of whom seems to have already collected a small zealous following eager to accomplish whatever ridiculousness they are set to in an effort to depart the normalcy that contains a fight for the Inquisition that is no longer skirmish mission after skirmish mission but full battle, pitched and outright.

(Are half of them wearing... beribboned and otherwise decorated toilet seats of cloth, wood, or folded paper around their necks? Better choose your allegiance wisely, I guess!)

The island fortress has enough nooks and secluded spaces that some privacy can be found even in the midst of full-scale celebration. In seeking unoccupied places, however, every once in a while—around a corner, down a hall—shadows raise and move oddly at the corner of your vision, although a second harder look always seems to reveal only flickering torchlight.

It's a strange night.

The City of Kirkwall

While the threat of war looms here also, rather than dampen itself, the city outside the Inquisition's stronghold has turned that nervous energy outward in frenetic release.

The festival atmosphere persists all day: the markets are bright, packed with both shops and shoppers, filled with those intrepid celebrants who have already donned mask, costume, or both, and loud with the laughter of children running in wild packs to prank and pickpocket the unwary. Trickery is tolerated, if not openly encouraged and rewarded, especially if clever. Even so, the city guard is out in force, just in case someone gets a bit too excited.

Once the sun goes down, the city is lit in a way that almost recalls the events that earned Marian Hawke her title. Fires, large and small, blaze along the streets well past midnight, although it is torch and brazier rather than barricade and home, and while the streets are further lit by the bright light of both moons, one can imagine it is the second moon's light that better illuminates the revelries below.

And revelries there are, with abandon. Near every street has its ardent lovers, its merrymakers, its gleeful dancing and laughter. And, to go with them, its footpads, its drunkards, its whores and gamblers taking their games to the cobblestones. Satinalia's freedom is a little freer when what lurks on the horizon has come close enough that one can nearly catch the threatening glint of its red crystal in the darkness.

Moreso, when you live in a city that knows what it is to burn.

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"I shall allow you two," Alexandrie proclaims magnanimously, offering her hand again while sweeping her other out towards the dance in a gesture of invitation.

Six can't help the way she laughs a little, a soft noise that escapes her throat before she can do anything else. Shaking her head, she steps forward and takes Alexandrie's hand. "As long as you are sure of yourself."

They'll be joining a frankly ridiculous mixed bag of dancers once they make it onto the dance floor - ladies and rich gentlemen in fine silks and elaborate masks dancing with or among young men and women in their best of two pairs of clothes, two sworn enemies from the Light and Dark courts dueling by way of a comically dramatic dance. Among the assorted fray is a soldier too, clashing yellow flowers stuck in his ginger beard. He's sweeping about some red handed girl from the Inquisition's laundry, and must say something to her because all at once she's laughing loudly as they romp their way enthusiastically about the margins.

The people are a mix and she finds herself a little confused by it all, at least at first. Alexendrie is to be her guide, she's well aware of that, but it doesn't make it that much easier for her to bear. At least she is not wearing her armour - that would have made all of this a terrible tragedy and there's something calming about that... Even if she might feel a little braver with her metal and her sword on her back.

She begins to move with Lexie, careful and frustratingly focussed on her feet, brow furrowed, until she spots a familiar figure. She didn't expect to see Marcoulf here and her eyes widen, flicking over his features for a moment, almost stomping on Lexie's toes as she does. The flowers in his beard attract her attention and something like a smile settles on her face, warm and fond as she looks at him. She's glad to see him, despite the awkwardness of their previous interactions, and some of the tension in her shoulders falls away at the familiar presence of someone she trusts.

Alexandrie is about to begin attempting to engage the woman with something to distract her from her own movements so that she might loosen a bit and begin to trust herself in them a bit more when something else does the job for her. Something over her right shoulder. What is she looking—oh. A more mischievous smile flickers to life on Alexandrie's lips. Someone.

Well, she can't very well continue to dance with someone who really ought to have a different partner. And so she eyes the trajectory of the fellow and his partner, dances herself and her partner slightly in that direction, and when the moment comes she 'stumbles' with a laugh of purposefully drunken merriment right into the two of them and, in the ensuing chaos, makes off with the laundress in a continued romp.

Have fun, you two.

And in a glint of faux armor and laughing, there goes his dance partner. It's so quickly done that he hardly has time to register more than the flash of the woman's costume plate before she's away, much less the company he's inherited. Grin all crooked, Marcoulf half turns to say something ('Should we make the best of it?') to the man at his elbow and--

Goes all sharp, abruptly all limbs and elbow joints as he realizes the tall, sturdy fellow beside him isn't a fellow at all. Has he ever seen her out of her armor? In the dining hall from a distance, maybe. If prompted, he wouldn't have been able to picture it. She looks strange outside of it - even more like some long necked stag that doesn't know the width of its antlers and is uneasy about getting tangled in some low hanging tree.

(They're in the way. They shouldn't stand here.)

(It's Satinalia. This breed of nonsense is what this day is technically meant for.)

He gives her a short, stiff bow - more head tilt than anything -, and offers her his hand. Maker, what an unattractive combination they are. "Do you know the steps?" A brusque question.

Six is astounded by the movement of the woman with her hand in hers, urging her to dance and enjoy the festivities. She almost forgets about her awkward two left feet and her strange inability to manage herself properly, not when the people around them are having such fun and there is nothing short of laughter and jovial behaviour to lose herself in. This must be why people enjoy this event so much - they're delighted, enjoying themselves, dancing and pretending as though ills are not upon their doorstep.

It's only when she's have thrust into Marcoulf that she realises that, actually, she might hate Santinalia after all.

She feels a little bit awkward now, dressed in such nice clothing when she is better suited for her armour. She looks more handsome in it - the shine of the metal and the bulk of it distracts from her face and her straw hair and people spend less time looking at the shape of your body when plating covers it entirely. He must think her foolish, some ridiculous, uncomfortable woman attempting to dance as if she knows what to do - when clearly he does. He has been her guide in many things but surely he does not deserve this, unjustly forced to manage an ungainly partner. At least the lady Alexandrie had seem prepared for that.

For a brief moment in time Six looks as if she might reject him, as if she might turn away, suddenly panicked at the idea of making more of a fool of herself - an ugly fool with a friend to take pity on her - but she swallows and nods her head. Courage comes easily when she demands it of herself, though she imagines a dragon might be an easier foe.

"I know them enough." She nods, reaching to take his hand, almost shy. The urge to pray for Sarenrae's guidance is on her lips, but it'll be useless here and she will make no demands of a Maker who has never spoken to her. "I swear I will avoid your toes, Marcoulf."

"It's no different from swords. You've yet to trample me there," he says, perfectly perfunctory about the way he solidifies his grip on her hand. He sets his other hand at her waist and doesn't think about how uneasy it makes him to do it. He ammends: "Except for when you've meant to."

Kicking one another's heels out is a perfectly respectable defensive maneuver.

She's a hand taller than he is and broader by far, but what's true in the training yard holds here as well. He's awfully long in the leg, that de Ricart. Or he's at least quick enough that he seems like he could be. Faced fixed into a blank look behind the plain dark mask he's wearing, Marcoulf waits a beat-- and finds the music again, leading her through the first ungainly steps.

"Only because I have not yet had reason to." It's an attempt at a joke if nothing else, something to fend off the awkwardness. "Other than tripping, but that is not the same thing." This is a terrible situation to be in, isn't it? Her hand settles awkwardly wherever she can reach - she's so tall and she feels it suddenly - before she nods her head.

She'd rather be fighting him; that's familiar and easy. It's what she knows. Dancing is a whole other language and her stomach twists into awkward little knots inside of her, ready to burst through her chest or up through her throat. She's nervous, she realises, and she tries to keep herself together.

They fall into step together well enough; they're used to dancing around one another in training. They have an edge of uncertainty until the music draws them in again, and then Six is adjusting her weight and doing her best to fall into step. It takes her what seems like eons to figure out what she is doing and where she needs to go, but it doesn't take her too long and eventually she can draw her eyes away from her feet.

"Thank you for indulging me."

"Think nothing of it."

He could have said 'It's no trouble' or 'Happily', but he isn't in the habit of lying on purpose. It is trouble and any ease that might have eventually populated sheerly from the fact that dancing is easy and he's done this before - had his hands on partners taller than him -, is having holes eaten into it by some little wiggling worm of paranoia living under his skin.

But his face doesn't say anything about it and neither does his footwork, the steadiness of his hand. He guides her through the steps at the margins of the dance floor, keeping clear of the bulk of the other partners until she's a little more certain of where her heels belong. She won't step on him, he's certain, but he has an obligation to protecting everyone else in their vicinity as well.

"Is this your first Satinalia?" Has he ever asked her how long she's been here? He thinks maybe he hasn't.

Six is beginning to think, just a little, that she might understand Marcoulf better... And then something like this happens.

She had never done anything like this with the other people she had trained with. The soldiers had found her ungainly and ugly - she had heard their jeering, she remembers it - and the mercenaries would not dance with people who were there for coin rather than camaraderie. Adrian... He had been a unique and wonderful case, but he had never dared be close enough. He had loved her, she knows that, but he had loved her for her strength, not the fluidity of her body. There was no dancing for them.

Absently, Six wonders if she might be flushing. She forces herself to concentrate on their movements, of not making more a fool of herself than she already has been with her bulk and her awkward steps and the fact that she had shoved into a friend's - friend's? - arms without so much as a word. At least his question distracts her.

"It is. I have been here for almost nine months now and we have nothing like it where I am from." Nothing she had attended at least - Sarenrae's festivals are different. "Are they always like this?"

"More or less." This one has more coin being shown in places - in some of the guests' elaborate clothing, their masks, their choices of diversions for the evening - than he's used to, but strip all that away and it's more or less the same as any town square's showing. An excuse to be drunk and stupid, to ward off the beginning of winter with a little absurdity.

Which this - him guiding her through the steps and slowly integrating them in with the other dancers once he's sure she won't misstep - definitely qualifies as.

"You don't have festivals where you're from? No holy days?"

She's easier to get along with - less awkward, less fumbling - when she's kept talking about something she finds familiar, he thinks. That's fine. Asking questions isn't exactly a challenge.

More or less. She should be getting used to the dancing, the loudness, the alcohol and the drunkenness - it has been ten years - but it still makes her feel a discomfort she cannot admit aloud. It shakes her to remember that she had admitted as much to Marcoulf in her own panic and fear, and the shame makes her come close to stumbling before she manages to gather herself.

She doesn't make a fool of herself - this time.

"There are holy days, but not like this." She shakes her head. "We celebrate Sarenrae, but it is not quite as Santinalia is. We dance with burning blades, we have feasts, we pray and we reenact her victories. It is... Both calmer and louder."

His hand is remarkably steady even as her footing falters, a sturdy point to help in her recovery should she need it.

"We've days something like that. For prayer and quiet. And on Summerday, girls and boys of a certain age dress all and white and attend to the Chantry to be told how to be mindful adults. It's for weddings as well. No burning swords, though." From the tone of his voice, he must think it's a shame. Though he can't imagine running around with a sword on fire and not having a drink or two in him to go with it.

"Satinalia is wilder than most. It helps, I think, that the Inquisition is all so largely young and unmarried."

At least Marcoulf seems to know what she is doing. Six feels a little as though she might have been taking advantage of the kindnesses she has been shown by him and she wants to see if she can find some means of repaying it - the kind of means that he would accept. A small voice in her mind tells her that it is a road she will have to tread most carefully.

"Of a certain age." She shakes her head, wry. She thinks that must be the kind of things that a girl with a mother might have done, rather than a girl with a Haylon. "The Burning Blades is for anyone who worships Sarenrae. I have not attended as many as might be expected, but I am still learning."

Her eyes dance around, looking at the people gathered for a moment.

"Ah. So it is that kind of party."

"Not necessarily. But a lot like this - you could put them in Chantry whites and they'd find a way to make it that way." Sword cut, birds sing, large groups of unattached men and women between sixteen and forty will find of debauching anything. It's not a judgement; it just is. "And besides, they are all going to real fighting soon. It's a good reason to make a fool of yourself."

He's steering her through the dancers now, cutting in from the perimeter of the floor so they can join the rotation properly. It's not a dance meant for trading partners, so there's no harm in wading into the midst of it.

"It's good that you're here," he says abruptly. Not unkindly just-- not warm either. But when has he ever been that? Even now with his hand at her waist and his rough fingers about her hand, he's more steady than he is any kind of heat. "It doesn't do to sit up in your room sharpening a sword or whatever you like when there's better things to do."

It's not something that Six understands, really. She had never felt that maidenly desire to be attractive to anyone, not even when she had tumbled around and found herself travelling with a handsome Paladin. With him - with Adrian - she had wanted to show her worth, her sword arm, her strength, her talent. Beauty and femininity had never come into it and he had liked her enough for it. She cannot picture herself in Chantry whites, making a fool of herself and dancing with the finesse of someone born into it.

Perhaps it's for the best; she doesn't want to give people who might look upon her and Marcoulf the wrong impression. It would be unjust to him, with all the help he had given her over the last few weeks.

His words draw her back to the present and she blinks, pausing for a moment.

"Is that what you imagine me to do in my spare time?" She's not offended, at least; it's something she could picture herself doing if she wasn't here. Shaking her head, some loose hair tumbling and curling around her face, Six hums thoughtfully. "I did not think this was an event I could miss. Thedas is my home now and I wish to embrace that."

No, that's not really what he imagines, but really - how should he know?, is probably what he means to say. He thinks it, briefly, only for it to be promptly eclipsed by something else entirely: What does a spirit do when it's alone in a place it doesn't belong? and a sudden nauseating discomfort. His hand shifts a faintly at her waist, going briefly feather light.

Then he puts it out of his head. He's been doing a fine job of not thinking about the Fade, about walking there, about how much the spirits there had seemed as flesh and bone, about rifters and what they are, and there's no reason to start now. But by the time he manages it thohgh, the moment in which he should have responded has passed.

"Let's switch directions. On three," he says. Three beats and he releases her, swaps which hand is where, and then off they go counter to the other dancers on the floor.

It will draw the eye, he thinks. Someone will notice her all pretty with her hair coming down and care to cut in. Better if he could make her laugh as well. Then he'll have secured his escape route toward a stiff drink.

"Your horse has been playing tricks in the stable. He keeps untying his leads and going wandering in the yard."

Edited 2018-11-18 15:09 (UTC)

It's not too far from the truth, which is why it amused her so much. She spends her time training, praying and with her sister and animals; there is not much in the way of excitement for someone who has found herself a soldier in a war she had never imagined to be fighting. Perhaps one day she will figure a better place for herself in this world, but until she gets to that point she has a routine she can stick to.

It doesn't even bother her that this is what people imagine of her. If it is the truth why should she take offence to it? She is a strong woman who keeps care of her equipment, who does not allow herself to feel as though she is faltering or losing her grip on her talents. It is more than can be said for some.

The direction has her suddenly focussed on her feet again, but she does not stumble. Marcoulf is an easy person to follow, she finds - it was the same with the horses, with the training. If only he was easier to understand.

Of course, Six has no understanding of just how handsome she might appear to the rest of Thedas, head tilted and gaze set on the man in front of her. In her mind she is a fumbling giant rather than a pretty young woman dancing with a main, hair curling and framing her face. A few people are looking, but she appears almost painfully ignorant of it.

"Has he?" That does make her smile, fondness settling on her features. "Perhaps I should exercise him more. A wandering spirit is no bad thing, however."

Close enough. If he can keep her smiling like that, someone will be at hand to take his place the moment this song winds down. If not before.

"I don't know that it's a wandering spirit so much as your gelding like to pull and chew on rope," he says, wry enough that it has to be a joke. Good humor, at the very least.

(Maker, he thinks he'd like to be away from this place now.)

She is, of course, entirely oblivious. Her focus is on Marcoulf and nothing else, because he is comfortable and familiar in the wake of the overwhelming nature of the gathering itself.

"I will speak with the stablemaster and see what can be done." It's said fondly, at least, and there's warmth to her. She still feels a touch ungainly, but at least there's this.

Perhaps once the dance is over she can escape.

"Just have him tied with two lines. Someone will notice he's undone one before he has time to pull the second loose. Or," he says, as they round through the swirl of dancers about them. "He'll learn to untie them faster, I suppose."

It's the driest brand of humor, aided only slightly by a quirked eyebrow and sly sidelong glance as they go cavorting through the swirl of dancers. And there, as they come around to the far side of the dance floor, Marcoulf spots some likely interloper across the line of his leading arm. Some tall, slim man with a head of dark curls - a steel colored doublet all slashed with red with a crimson mask to match. Marcoulf doesn't recognize him. Not someone in the guard, then. Maybe some Inquisition scout not long for Kirkwall. Visiting minor nobility. Some trader looking for an Inquisition favor.

Whoever he is, he's looking this way. Thank the Maker. Give them once more about the floor and he'll be able to turn who over to someone with a bit of a intent. Good. It's not unlike the horses in the Kirkwall market; she could do with a better partner.

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Under the Second Moon

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