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! )

Threaded | Flat

The package has been hounding him since the moment he had returned from Sundermount with Thranduil a missing piece of his heart, left to rot and ruin in the midst of his despair and his anger.

The loss of Adalia has frustrated him, left him angry and irritated - he knows that their relationship had been faltering, had been falling apart, but he also knows that it is a relief to have one less person to be wary of, one lesson person for him to be concerned about. Too many people had known his experiences, his secrets, and with the number whittling down to just two he feels more comfortable, more relaxed.

It does not mean he forgives Thranduil - trust has been broken all the same, there's no denying that - but the loss of one person makes some of the edge relax, makes him miss and long for the companionship of someone who truly understood him. Someone who was more like kin than anyone else had ever been and there's no denying the fact that what he shared with Thranduil was something unique in Thedas.

Gathering the package in his hands, he makes his way to the Provost's office and knocks, once. Sharply.

It isn't unusual for Gwenaëlle to seek out Solas—she's long made him responsible for the safe-keeping of some of her more sensitive work—and he had made such a point not to treat her any differently that it had seemed at first unnecessary to change the habit. Awkward, a little; she's never allowed herself to hold many illusions that his tolerance of her is very separate from the friendship he'd so ruthlessly discarded with her husband. Holding out her own hand patiently took on a somewhat different flavour, when it felt less like something she might build from and more...

He doesn't treat her any differently, however angry he is, however he's cut them off. Whatever she knows, which she suspects is substantially less than he thinks—

It's hard not to feel, in the face of how easy that has seemed to be—how smoothly done, how she'd never have known if she didn't have Thranduil's unhappiness to mark it by—that it can only mean he was always false to her, and that this simply requires nothing different of him.

He didn't leave Thranduil to die when he had the chance, so maybe that's not unsalvageable (for his sake, she hopes not), but more than anything it's a tired feeling of old embarrassment that lingers. That again she's presumed too much of someone's sentiment, hoped for something that she shouldn't have, and can't have even the satisfaction of feeling her mistake is anything significant. When she knocks at his door, Hardie close at her heels, she doesn't carry more notes as she might usually—and she is trying very much to look as if she isn't looking very serious.

It's important not to be bothersome, or to make a fuss. It's worse if she makes a fuss.

“Hello,” she says, and her usual warmth with him isn't absent, just muted; her fingers fidgeting behind her back until she flattens her hands and clasps them in front of her. “I just wanted to come and collect my anchor-shard notes.”

She is not someone exactly at home in a library. It is not that she dislikes reading, nor great works of literature. Certainly, she had been the patron of many of them, enjoyed hearing them talk, being a part of sharing their wisdom.

But she was someone rather more fond of being on horseback. Of being out and moving, most certainly. So she comes to the library with a purpose rather than a great passion to read. The book she's after, it turns out, is taken at the moment by --

-- Well, shit. She eyes Solas briefly, across the small room. She hadn't approached him, at any given point by herself. Especially not after... well. That.

Right, well, the Rani of Jhansi rode her horse off a fortress with a sword in each hand. Or some such nonsense. This surely wasn't half as legendary as all that. So she can do it now, as she comes up to him. Clearing her throat with a polite cough. Neither too close nor too far.

"Master Solas?"

Kostos prefers not to be outdoors at all, if he can help it, and especially not during winter. The temperatures aren't intolerable yet, especially with the walls around the Inquisition's gardens blocking the full bite of the wind and the mages who are more into plantlife doing whatever mages who are into plantlife do to keep the gardens alive and temperate, and it's a nice day on top of that, but he's irritated anyway, stepping heavier-footed in his boots than he needs to be and pulling his hands into his sleeves when he isn't using them.

That's only rarely. He isn't outdoors for fun; he's outdoors because he's more finicky about his face than the weather, and the healers are out of the salve he's been slapping on his jaw at night to try to minimize scarring, and that means he's making his own. Or trying. Maybe. It's possible he'll instead take handfuls of ingredients to Anders or Isaac or his strange, haughty little cousin and ask for help, if he can stomach it.

In the meantime he's pinching leaves off of the winter elfroot—not too many—and playing his usual silent games (that no one else will ever know about as long as he lives) with a wisp that's bobbing around his shoulders, but half-heartedly and slowly, because he's cold and mad about it.

It's too slow, and too half-hearted, and when Solas sits down to read, the wisp decides, for whatever spirity reason, that he looks like more fun. It's already reached him when Kostos turns around to glare at it, then at the elf, like maybe it's his fault.

"Leave him alone," he says—to the wisp, not Solas, and it stops where it is, hovering a few feet away from him and pitching its quiet whirring hum lower in dismay.

Threaded | Flat

thranduil.

wildcard.

library.

kirkwall/gardens.