faderift | the holy dove was moving too

Entry tags:

the holy dove was moving too

WHO: Solas and you
WHAT: Open post
WHEN: Throughout the entire month
WHERE: All around Kirkwall
NOTES: N/A

LIBRARY.

Solas spends much of his time in the library as he always does. There are books open in front of him. They're written in Common, in Elven, one or two with scraps of Qunlat littered around the margins (this is Kirkwall, after all). He is devouring what he can, still studying and investigating everything that he can, making notes and putting pieces of parchment to one side, putting things to one side, closing books but not getting up to put them away.

What proves clear, eventually, is just how much time Solas is actually spending in his studies. For a man that enjoys sleeping as much as he does he is not getting much of it - and he has no other symptoms, so this is clearly a personal endeavour rather than anything from his own suffering. The piles of books get larger, higher, and he can often be found scowling at them, as if they should have more answers than they do, as if the hours he had spent uncovering the history of Kirkwall had been entirely pointless.

He sits in a corner keeping to himself, waiting, frowning, reading and reading. He makes himself comfortable eventually, pouring himself a cup of something to drink - not tea - before he gives himself a moment to shut his eyes and relax.

KIRKWALL.

When not in the library, Solas can be found wandering Kirkwall, investigating things he might have otherwise missed. He doesn't linger much in taverns or bars - they're hardly the kind of place he'd waste his time, even if it means he might be able to discover more of what the 'common' people might be interested in - but he does travel to Darktown at times, does look into the depths of what it is like for the elves here, offering what he can to aid them as little as it might be. He is a familiar face to some of them: they are absent from the Dalish and so the two of them get along far better than he might with anyone of the clans.

Eventually, he makes his way back to the Inquisition proper and spends a little time wandering around the gardens, arms crossed behind his back and his attention focussed on the herbs, on the plants, on the things that interest him. He does not seem to mind being interrupted, if anyone has the desire, and he seems in a pleasant enough mood before he makes himself comfortable on a bench, drawing a book from somewhere and beginning to read, flicking the pages absently.

WILDCARD.

( Find him in the Gallows, near his room, hanging near Galadriel and anywhere else your heart desires! )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lakshmi is dressed well, handsomely, and there's something like a knot of pain in Solas' stomach as he looks at her and wonders, quietly, what she might have been if she had arrived millennia before now. It's not something he wants to consider because it makes him feel desperately on edge, very confused and unsure, and it's a thought he shoves aside for now.

Instead, he watches her, eyes drinking her in, thoughtful, before he focusses on what she is asking of him, measuring her. She is not quite as he remembered her, very different from the Fade - but there is likely good reason for that.

"It is no trouble." Solas reaches for the book and moves, standing, reaching to offer it out as he leans over the table. "I have other books to occupy myself with while you borrow that one. What are you studying?"

She had been, once, a very different woman. One who had been considered handsome in a way. Had been considered polite, kind, honest. Who had ruled with tempered hands, looked for the best in others, even when she had grown up in a far different place. Believed in something more than all this violence, this blood.

It's that woman that looks over the book, picks it up carefully with a marked respect for it. Smoothes against the edge of the pages. The tenets she had lived her life by. "Myths, legends, historical works."

Solas' view on handsomeness is somewhat distorted by time and experience, he finds, but he can appreciate what Lakshmi is. Was. However she considers himself. His affection is tied up in another - that's likely a rumour that has found itself spread easily enough and the golden hair he wears around his neck, while not hers, might aid those rumours - but he can appreciate beauty as much as she can.

Nodding his head, he takes a seat.

"What kind of historical works? Dwarven, human, elven, or simply Tevene?"

It is a rumour she has certainly heard, on the days she spends her time weaving with Galadriel in their mutual business. Nothing she would pry into if it wasn't told her. Despite how bluntly she puts things when she knows about them - perhaps her greatest downfall of ruling was ever that lack of tact, at times - she can at least mind it when it hasn't been made her business in one form or another.

"All. If this is to be my lands, my people, I would know them all like they were my own." She kicks a smile, brief, at her own expense. "I am sure you've noticed, I tend not to do things by halves."

It's not something that Solas necessarily concerns himself with. Galadriel is a proud, wonderful woman with an intelligence to match it and the two of them together are certainly something dangerous, something to be wary of - if someone knew the depth of what they both were, of course. To an outsider they might appear an odd match with her beauty and his very obvious... 'Hobo' appearance, if one is to listen to a certain Altus.

"Then you should know the truth." He's careful with his words but carries a confidence that he cannot deny, nodding to another pile of books. "The true history of Thedas, unmarred by legend of whispers from time. They are there if you wish to look for them."

Hobo? Say it isn't so. Better than looking like a trumped-up peacock, in one Lakshmi's opinion.

But then, she is the woman that favoured wearing plain clothes, that ever preferred practicality. She would leave that to her husband, rest him. But Solas looked rather than dressed down, someone rather sturdy for his work. But then, she was a daughter of Brahmin, raised to greatly admired the wandering esoteric that had dotted her childhood stories. Wise men who turned their back on earthly gains, in pursuit of higher knowledge.

Her gaze turns, listening keenly, to the books he indicates. "And which version is that? The one the chantry tells?" The smile there, well, he had heard exactly what she thinks of the Chantry. "Or some other?"

There is reason behind everything Solas does and his appearance is just one thing among a list of many that he has cultivated in order to perform what he wishes to. He appears as nothing unusual, nothing that might call too much attention to him, other than his lack of hair and the tattoos missing from his features. He is elven and does not stand out, not in a world that dubs them less than slaves in the eyes of most (and that is still something that burns, hot and intense, inside of him).

Shaking his head, he breathes out, leaning back in his chair. He seems pained more than anything, even if his reply seems coloured with dry humour.

"I would not put great faith in what the Chantry has to say. They did not exist in the time of the People - how might they record history of something that was born before them?"

"No, I thought not."

It seems he was willing to talk. That was refreshing at least. She didn't particularly blame anyone that she had so recklessly endangered for not being fond of her, to say the least. But at least - one part of it was salvaged. So she takes a moment, looking about for a chair to sit in. Smoothing the wrap of the saree skirts underneath her. Carefully arranging the pallu over her shoulder in the familiarity one has in clothing they're used to. Flicking it with her fingers before she reaches for the books he indicated.

"What we saw - " she clears her throat. A little tilt of her head skyward. You know where. "- was very different to what they seemed to describe. It did make me think perhaps they did not have all the answers." But that was more than a little true as she reaches for the nearest book, from what he was saying. "People. That is what the elves call themselves?" Not mocking, merely settling to learn.

"The Chantry cannot understand what it does not want to understand and that shall always be their downfall."

There's a reason why Solas is well known as the expert in the Fade and the Veil - it is what he knows, deeply and intimately, as a Dreamer and as something deeper, a darker secret only few can claim to know. He is familiar with the shape and scope of what the Fade is and comes to be, and what the Chantry preaches can never come close to the realities of what it is. No, they are afraid of the spirits and demons that rest there, wishing to cross over into the waking world, and so they damn so many with the stroke of one brush. Foolish and ignorant, he thinks.

At least Lakshmi seems willing to listen.

"They think that they have answers, but they mistake many things. There are other places to learn." It's cryptic, surely, but there are books in front of them and she has someone who might be willing to share, should she ask the right questions. Biting back a sigh, Solas shakes his head. "No. That is what the elves were before they became what they are now. Before the loss of their immortality."

How similar it sounds, and something she had not wanted turns panicked in her stomach. Makes her swallow in the manner of stretching an old wound, an old hurt. That when it shows on her face is something plain - oh yes, she knows. She knows exactly how that goes.

Let it be, let them choke on it, let them die gasping on all the things they decide to not understand.

But she at least has the good sense of directing her gaze down into the book she has pulled. "Their immortality?"

It's something that Solas knows deeply and personally - of course it is, with all his personal involvement in the lives of the elves and the mastery of that. How can he be anything but filled with emotion when he recalls what they were and compares it to what they have become? Walking in dreams to visit ancient temples and ruins does nothing to soothe his rattled emotions and thoughts and even here, now, he feels on edge and sharp.

It is unforgivable. He will never be able to undo the damage it has done to his heart.

"Once the elves were stronger, magically powerful, with gifts that no one in this world can possibly imagine. Then, or so the legend says, the humans came and it was stolen from them."

She let's the book settle in front of her, at once more taken by how he speaks than written words might accomplish from a book.

So instead, she fishes for one book of her own, the small pot of ink and short quill for just the occasion, and with it, as he talks, she writes. Breaking up to look at him, watch him, - not in trade but written in her own language, curving devangari script of a mix of Hindi and Marathi.

"How was it, that humans stole it from them?" is where she replies, as the sentence comes to an end. Looking back up to him after she's finished.

Solas is not offended by her desire to make notes. He'd rather she write down the true histories of the People and Thedas than make note of what might be wrong in the tomes and volumes that are in the libraries. She could speak to the Dalish or the dwarves and get a dozen or so mistakes, but here... He carries the truth in his own mind.

He witnessed it enough in dreams to be unable to forget what had happened, the weight of it all on his shoulders even now. He cannot forget.

"Stories say that the elves met tribal people who came south from Par Vollen. They grew friendly with them, but their unions produced only human children and exposure to humans shortened their own lives."

"How... Strange."

All of it really, she realises at it as she pauses there to begin her next line of information.

"I take it this is something of a resentment to many elves? Not least for the crude station they are reduced to presently."

It is not that any of this is necessarily wrong - it is what many of the elves believe. Their histories tell of mingling with humans that then enslaved them - how were they to know the truth when they ignore what their people truly were? The Dalish are so far beyond what the People had once been that Solas can see nothing mirrored in them and it pains him more as the days go by.

"It did lead to more suffering for them," them, not us. "Those from Tevinter began to enslave them and their part in the role of Andraste has often been deliberately brushed aside by the preaches of the Chantry."

"Typical," it's spat out before she has the good sense to stop it. But then, he's heard her say far more unforgiving things at this point, so it was probably mild admission in the grand scheme of things.

But she clears her throat. Her eyes staying focused on her page as she begins to scratch another set of words, this time, going left to right in another kind of script. "I have been told the story of the elf that fought next to Andraste. Though not from any member of the Chantry to be certain."

Solas doesn't seem the least offended by her outburst, not considering his own views and opinions on the Chantry and their role in the downfall of the elves. He's studied dreams and histories enough to know the realities of most things, and while Shartan might not be his area of expertise he knows enough.

"His name was Shartan. Slaves, under his leadership, were supporters of Andraste and her uprising against the Tevinter Imperium. Now, however, Orlesian scholars write treatises on how elves are animals and that relations with them are an insult to their Maker."

"I know this pain." As much and as little as she might say in such a way.

She thinks of the beautiful woman in Gwenaelle's painting. Stuck stunningly by the love of the one who commissioned such a thing. ( A handsome man, is the thought that isn't in the mood to think about ). So that's why a bastard wasn't good enough when many children no doubt were born to worse circumstance than Gwen was, a child of only her father's line should be enough.

( There is a question of course, how she compares them, a sense of France, England, and her own lands, that she should know better than to immediately correlate as the same. When she knew enough conversational French to get by, but a stilted, halting sort of Orlesian that was a mess in comparison. But nobility had not changed it seemed from their land to hers, to not know how Lords and Ladies liked to take their pleasures unthinkingly. Nevermind that these lands were not so caught up on a man or woman's inheritance for that to be half the excuse. )

Bastards, the lot of them. Is the grand sum up for all those thoughts. Perhaps that was why Gwen was a foul as she was, she thinks she might be that sort of woman as well if she'd had to stomach such nonsense without the armies, support and love from her own people to temper her anger to something else.

"I am sorry. I am sorry for the pain my kind have caused yours in this place. I know it does little to ease it. I have little enough sway in the Inquisition, especially now, but what I am in charge of - if there is something you need in particular - only ask."

Solas is aware of the pain and suffering that the elven people had been forced to survive as a result of the creation of the Veil and the fall of the Evanuris. With the loss of their power, their immortality, and the arrival of humanity and more across Thedas... Of course they would fall and falter. Losing their strength and losing one of the few who might be able to guide and lead them to a long sleep meant they were weak - vulnerable.

He thinks of the Temple of Falon'Din, of all the sleeping elves who had died in their rest, who had fallen into their long slumber and expected to wake. He thinks of the spirits that he had seen, the whispers that had tried to call herself Mythal to harm him, to hurt him, feeling an ache in his chest that he cannot force away. He feels the power of it now, the guilt and desire to fix all that he had done to harm and hurt the people even as he feels the same, familiar sourness at the idea of the Dalish being the ones to reclaim it.

So many are unworthy, with their painted faces and their false beliefs, never daring to listen to the truth. It makes him as uncomfortable as anything might.

Shaking his head, Solas makes himself comfortable in his chair, arms crossing over his chest. He can see why people are so happy to lump him into the same pile as the other elves, as if he is from the cities or some strange Dalish hahren who did not allow himself to have painted vallaslin, but he is not one of them. He will never, ever be one of them.

"Do not apologise to me. They are not my people." He shakes his head, waving a hand. "I ask nothing from you. It would be wrong for me to take advantage of a sense of guilt that is unworthy of you to carry."

That gives her pause - because she thinks she understands but, well, she has certainly has learnt her lesson about her assumptions being things she relies on. "Do you say that because of how the People have divided themselves apart so much?"

She hovers there and wonders how to say that - there is no guilt. Guilt to her, was a mindless, grief-stricken emotion, that she did her best never linger in. It accomplished nothing.

"May I tell you a story, Master Solas?"

"Something like that." It's not more a lie than anything else Solas has ever said to members of the Inquisition. The Dalish and the City elves are not his people and they never will be; the People he loved and cherished so deeply are dead and gone and there is no way for him to return them to life. All he can do is restore what was once lost and hope that it brings what he had taken back to Thedas.

Turning his head to look at her again, he nods his head. Books and notes are pushed aside, a man settled in to listen to a tale. He's fond of stories, of histories, of anything he might learn of the world, and he is content to hear what she has to offer.

"Please."

"There was a land. One of many rivers, and filled with many kinds of people. Places that were green, lush and dense, so hot it felt like being wrapped in a blanket that opened onto a beautiful ocean. Others dry, arrid, with huge palaces cut into the rocky landscape that though they had no forests, they carved them as intricately as a jungle. It was ancient, for thousands of years, many had come. Not always peacefully, or with kindness in the heart, and there were fierce battle, proud warriors. The land was rich with spices, even poor men and women would adorn themselves like flowers. But in time, this land of many rivers softened them and they became part of it. Many people desired it after all, but soon they came to love it, they were part of it as it was part of them."

Lakshmi taps her finger, the nail clicking on the wood. Painting the history of Hindustan was a hard thing to summarise briefly, especially when so briefly to not weigh him down in details.

"But then another Empire came. They didn't care about the people. In fact, they didn't even consider them human - people - as you would say. They compared this land of so many cultures, faiths, nations, men and women to beasts. Beasts they did not value as more than labour. For their empire was so proud of itself it never thought it could be responsible of an ever greater evil. Monsters came dressed in their uniform, and at night, they turned into monsters and slipped into villages of the poor and hungry and like the wolves they twisted into, they ate them. Tore them limb from limb. Empty and hungry, and so much stronger. It took ten full warrior men to take down one if they were lucky. What chance did a farmer have?"

She swallows, the taste of blood thick between her teeth, the dust patching the back of her throat. but he had seen it in the fade with her. He had seen the red coated men. How their bodies twisted and ripped apart and devoured all in their path. Ripped and destroyed and gloried in their gluttony of gore.

"And the empire that had come to rule, did not care to know. It didn't want to know as long as they could get rich off this land, what did they care for their suffering? If the people were too busy fighting to survive the very night, how could the care when the temples were destroyed? Sacred animals slaughtered, thousands, thousands of years of traditions over turned."

Her tapping stops. Then she fixes, unafraid, vicious in a way that compared to the flare of her temper at different points, was cold and hot and so fixed on one, single point at the end of this story. "It is not guilt, Master Solas. Misunderstand me on all manner of things, but not this. It is not guilt."

Solas listens, and he thinks of home.

Not the Inquisition. Nor Kirkwall or Skyhold or the world of Thedas now; not even the Fade, wrapped around him like a comforting blanket, a warmth that he could not ignore or pretend to not miss. Thinking of Arlathan leaves a deep ache in his chest; he thinks of the magic there, the great libraries, the spirits and the people, awake and those lost in their sleep and dreams, and he feels the urge to lean his head down and breathe out, to try and force himself to relax, overcome him.

He does not, of course. He resists.

"Empires often do not care about the people who are present when they find a new place to live. The elves learned that." His fault. It makes the soft ache of pain burst into an echo of pain, and he turns his head away, awkward and unsure. It's his fault that the People suffered, that they lost their immortality, their strength - everything lies at his feet. There's no denying that the humans had forced the elves to suffer, but it would never have been a possibility if he had not existed in the first place.

Leaning back, Solas makes himself comfortable again, forcing himself to breathe out and relax. Lakshmi is speaking of her experiences, and Solas respects that; he respects her, even if he isn't sure that he can trust the depth of who she is and her place here. She plays with magics, she plays with her own strength, and he is wary of what that means for them in the future. He cannot let what she knows become common knowledge; it is too dangerous. Far, far too dangerous.

"I understand." Empathy, then. Not guilt, but a kind of empathy that he can respect. It is not pitying, not desperate to try and find some place to demand respect - just understanding. "I apologise for speaking out of turn."

"I think I am the last one who is concerned when people are speaking out of turn."

A brief bubble of laughter at her own expense, the mouth on her that no, she didn't make any apologies for ( but when did she anything ? ). Instead, with it, she settles, easing back into her own chair. A jangle, of her belled anklets clattering in a faint chime, as one leg crosses itself below the table.

"But I could shout loudly again if you like, perhaps then I could find a new way to cross our Commanders."

"I think you might be surprised by how vocal some members of our organisation are."

Solas doesn't sound particularly cross or irritated with it; almost fond, or wryly amused. He's not accustomed to people who are trying to limit themselves or quiet their voices. He's more used to people being a touch on the side of argumentative, people who are more than happy to speak beyond their turns and demand that they be listened to, even if what they have to say has very little worth merit.

He shakes his head.

"No, it is unnecessary. I cede to your point."

the holy dove was moving too

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