faderift | open | neither snow nor rain

WHO: Nari, Lexie, you~
WHAT: Guardian catch-all for some ladies. (Well, one Lady and one elf.)
WHEN: The Present!
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: prompts I have promised people will be appearing below as I get to them!

Nari

I.

With the sleet keeping everything near-constantly coated with ice, Guardian is hardly the right month to be jaunting about between the Gallows towers and the towers that hold the massive machinery designed to raise and lower Kirkwall's immense chain net. The massive machinery that hasn't been used in two decades, ever since Viscount Threnhold had used it to strangle Orlesian trade and the Divine had ordered the city's Templars to 'convince' him to lower it. Threnhold's successors had been loathe to use it with such a tangle in the recent past, and so its mechanism is full of two decades of largely untended metal shifting, weathering, rusting in places.

The winter seas are rough enough that an assault by sea isn't likely, but the thin dark Dalish woman had shrugged and said that the Archon's Palace raising into the sky above Minrathous hadn't been all that likely either, and so here she is, on her way to the Chain tower, a pack of tools slung over her back. A pack that has been repaired several times, and by the look of it is about to need one more: something heavy looking is inching its way out of the back of it with every step she takes. Won't be long before that's lost. Hope it's not important.

II.

What Guardian is the right month for is being here near the hearth in the Hanged Man's taproom with a hot mug of mulled wine and a mallet, tapping chairs back together and listening with quiet amusement to a harper on one side and two tipsy men one-upping each other outrageously in order to try to take the same woman home on the other.

The important thing, really, is that the weather is outside, but the entertainment isn't unwelcome.

“Are you listening to this?” she asks, looking up briefly with a crooked grin spreading across her face, “The taller one has gone from fisherman to ship's captain in the space of five minutes.”

[ or something else! ]

Alexandrie

Winter here has not brought the lovely romantic fluffy pristine snow she'd dreamed of. It's desperately horrible in Kirkwall, and what work she can do from home she does from home with great relief. Unfortunately there are still meetings to be had, new correspondence to discuss, and every so often new books, scraps, and sheafs of paper arrive for the Inquisition that are in need of translation. All these things are in the Gallows, and so, begrudgingly, is Alexandrie.

She can be found now, looking far less disgruntled than she actually is, sitting at a table in the library with a letter in one hand—at which she is frowning with extreme delicacy—and a painted porcelain cup of tea in the other, her maid doing a spot of embroidery close enough at hand to refresh it when that becomes necessary.

“Ah!” she exclaims quietly, her glance warm and pleased over her painstakingly painted smile, “C'est parfait. Have you a moment to spare?”

[ ...or something else! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nari huffs laughter through her nose, "That's fair enough." She finishes the chair she's working on with a final decisive thud of mallet against wood, and then stands to right it, testing the solidity of it with her foot, and then grinning over at Merrill. "What's the most grandiose title you could give yourself without technically lying about it?"

It isn't meant to be a loaded question. Merrill knows that, knows that Nari is her friend. It still makes Merrill pause, the swing in her feet stopping, excited fidgeting all changing into perfect stillness.

"Keeper of the Sabrae Clan," she whispers after a moment, eyes fixed on her cup of wine. "Last of the Sabrae Clan."

Nari, having meant Lady of the Alienage Menagerie and Chosen of Gryphons or somesuch else, looks immediately guilt stricken.

"Abelas, lethallan," she says gravely, frozen still with her foot up on the chair, "I didn't—"

"I know," she manages - because she does know. Nari wouldn't have meant to dig into old wounds, old memories that are so much harder to ignore here in Kirkwall. It isn't her fault that the first thing that popped into Merrill's head when she said 'titles' is the title that Merrill would have had, if things had gone differently.

But it's what happened, and Merrill takes a shuddering breath, too shallow to really calm her down.

"I'm sorry, Nari, I just- that's the first thing that... I would have been. That I am, and aren't."

She knows the story, of course. All the clans of the Marches did. After the Arlathvhen, perhaps all the clans did. It had come even to the depths of the Planasene, brought back by Sedi and Nymii from one of their unexplained ranging excursions: the wholesale slaughter of Sabrae, laid in large part at the feet of its last daughter. They'd all been horrified, but upon actually meeting Merrill...

Nari had never asked, but she'd known immediately that there was more to it. A reason. There had to be. Another part to it, the same way she'd wondered on long hunts what Fen'Harel might have to say about why his statue sat outside of camp facing the darkness.

She lowers her foot from the chair and sets the mallet atop it to step closer and give the other woman's shoulder a light squeeze, a rare instance of touch. She'll keep it there, calm and solid, for as long as Merrill seems comfortable. There's nothing really she can say that would be more than just air, not about something like this.

Under Nari's touch, Merrill is trembling like a frightened rabbit. She feels ready to break at any moment, tears building up but not falling, a sob in her throat that won't break. How many tears has she cried for her fallen clan? At least one for each drop of blood spilt, and then more. Can she even keep crying?

She can, as it turns out. When she speaks now, her voice is raspy and wet.

"I go and visit them, you know. On Sundermount."

The harper keeps playing. The men keep boasting. Patrons laugh, and drink, and mugs slam, and Nari hooks her foot around the now-solid leg of her chair to pull it over so she can step up to join Merrill on the edge of the table and pull her into a hug, nodding into her hair.

It's easy to burrow into the hug, into Nari. It isn't the first hug she's shared over the fate of her clan, but that never makes them any more welcome. Merrill never stops thinking that maybe she doesn't deserve them, either - but she returns the hug all the same, fingers clinging to the back of Nari's shirt.

For every life she took, Merrill will save another with what her research discovered. She has already helped save one. She will keep going, as best she can, until she can't any more... and may the Creators forgive her either way.

But after a moment, she speaks up.

"I think my wine is dripping onto my lap."

"Oh! Um—" She pulls back, scrubbing a hand sheepishly through her hair as the corner of mouth pulls upwards in a wry apologetic smile.

"I'll... can I get you another?"

Her grip loosens, but Merrill keeps a hand on Nari for as long she's able. The tension, at least, has been somewhat broken; there's a sheepish laugh of her own and a nod.

"That would be lovely."

There a bit of a stretch of hesitant silence as Nari obviously fights with the impulse to stay with Merrill and follow through with her offer, but eventually she'll nod and go to wait at the bar.

Her steady work for them since the Inquisition's arrival gains her quick service, especially for an elf, when she's noticed, and before long she's back with a new mug. Light curls of steam escape it as she offers it out.

"I think we got some of the cloves in there." Lucky us! Don't choke.

open | neither snow nor rain

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