There's a makeshift shelter rigged over one of the benches. Unused trellising, its occupant vine dry and shriveled for the season, provides the tented shape of it, and a still-dirty tarp is lashed over the frame; it flaps in the driving wind that sweeps in over the walls of the courtyard sometimes. Inside sits Nahariel, wrapped in an oilcloth cloak, every line of her form and all her formidible focus turned towards the glow that shares the space with her.
"--I know, da'halla. You wouldn't be happy. Betrayal of the People and all that. But he needs me, and I need him, and it's hard sometimes, but what isn't. And we're happy. I think. As happy as you get." Nari smiles sheepishly. "He brings me tarts. I'd never had tarts. That's kind of like a buck, right?"
The faint and shimmering figure of Siuona Dahlasanor continues to look down at the sachets of tea she's compiling with a small smile, reaching up every so often to tuck one of the locks of hair that have fallen forward behind her ear. It will slide back down again soon, like it always had.
II. Courtyard, night (CW: gore, racism, allusions to rape)
Some of it is sweet. Birdsong, laughter, children playing hide-and-seek amongst the crates. Most of it is horror, and it keeps growing. But until she smelled it, that overpowering stench of burnt meat in the shifting spirit-light of the courtyard that changes like fire, none of them had been hers. A high pitched scream of denial stops Nari dead in her tracks, the chill of animal horror racing down her spine as the Fade-dwellers shift and blossom into the pandemonium of a Dalish camp in full blaze, cruel laughter and whooping issuing from men--and a few women--in patchwork armor casually chopping through the linked hands of those elves trying to pull their clanmates from beneath collapsing aravels. It's larger than life, all of it, as if viewed by a child.
She shuts her eyes, covers her face with both hands and shakes her head to clear it, but Ilriane is still screaming, muffled now.
(For Ghost!Cade)
It's the armor that draws her. It's recent; very recent. This battle that flickers through the streets isn't like the others. Not the Tevenes, nor the slaves, not the older renditions of the Chantry's flaming sword, the different slant of their pauldrons. This one could be taking place now. She's only started to begin to wonder when something else catches her eye. They're all helmeted, all covered, all the same except for shape, form, movement, but--
Nari, OTA
There's a makeshift shelter rigged over one of the benches. Unused trellising, its occupant vine dry and shriveled for the season, provides the tented shape of it, and a still-dirty tarp is lashed over the frame; it flaps in the driving wind that sweeps in over the walls of the courtyard sometimes. Inside sits Nahariel, wrapped in an oilcloth cloak, every line of her form and all her formidible focus turned towards the glow that shares the space with her.
"--I know, da'halla. You wouldn't be happy. Betrayal of the People and all that. But he needs me, and I need him, and it's hard sometimes, but what isn't. And we're happy. I think. As happy as you get." Nari smiles sheepishly. "He brings me tarts. I'd never had tarts. That's kind of like a buck, right?"
The faint and shimmering figure of Siuona Dahlasanor continues to look down at the sachets of tea she's compiling with a small smile, reaching up every so often to tuck one of the locks of hair that have fallen forward behind her ear. It will slide back down again soon, like it always had.
II. Courtyard, night (CW: gore, racism, allusions to rape)
Some of it is sweet. Birdsong, laughter, children playing hide-and-seek amongst the crates. Most of it is horror, and it keeps growing. But until she smelled it, that overpowering stench of burnt meat in the shifting spirit-light of the courtyard that changes like fire, none of them had been hers. A high pitched scream of denial stops Nari dead in her tracks, the chill of animal horror racing down her spine as the Fade-dwellers shift and blossom into the pandemonium of a Dalish camp in full blaze, cruel laughter and whooping issuing from men--and a few women--in patchwork armor casually chopping through the linked hands of those elves trying to pull their clanmates from beneath collapsing aravels. It's larger than life, all of it, as if viewed by a child.
She shuts her eyes, covers her face with both hands and shakes her head to clear it, but Ilriane is still screaming, muffled now.
(For Ghost!Cade)
It's the armor that draws her. It's recent; very recent. This battle that flickers through the streets isn't like the others. Not the Tevenes, nor the slaves, not the older renditions of the Chantry's flaming sword, the different slant of their pauldrons. This one could be taking place now. She's only started to begin to wonder when something else catches her eye. They're all helmeted, all covered, all the same except for shape, form, movement, but--
But she would know him in any crowd.