WHO: Gilia St. Low & YOU! WHAT: One Girls Quest To Be Absolutely Unnoticable: The Beginning. WHEN: From [gestures] to [gestures further along] WHERE: The Gallows, Kirkwall NOTES: None forseen, save for social anxiety and occasional eldritch horror.
Gilia cannot say no to almost anything, it seems. Regardless of who she was or what she is capable of. Or especially, more often, what she isn't capable of. If she is asked, she simply does. In that way, there is an ease to how she is folded back into the many working hands and feet of the Inquisition, that without the arrogance or bearing to indicate otherwise, she simply becomes no more noticeable than any other servant. Able to do the most important parts where any higher-up would notice, either way. She minds her betters with a please, thank-you and the appropriate downturn of her eyes when saying yes, my lord, of course, my lady.
The only things that set her apart from it, particularly, is her glowing green mark, subsequently covered up with gloves, and more tellingly, there are several tasks that she is quite miserable at. Not that she minds, no one bothers you, when you're scrubbing the floor, and the lack of complaint usually means her at times poorly, half done work is made up for by at least good humour and a willingness to make up for it.
The rest - when she doesn't know what sleeping lotus or crystal grace is - she can make up for with careful observation and a well-intentioned bit of snooping. Those were her preferred tasks, being set out to fetch things gave her a chance to wander without much conversation to poke at places and things. She had to save up the words. She liked Wysteria, but she did like to talk a dreadful amount, and it could be so exhausting.
So, what then was the problem. It was just one more order, written on the list. One more thing, that was no better or worse than any of the others, so why not her?
Why not her, indeed? As her fingers curl on the edges of the paper that had the instructions about the pile of swords, to be taken to the smithy. They were bundled and wrapped in a bind of leather and rope for carrying. She could never have said no - she had never said no to anyone and seemed a bit late to start saying it now. Nor did she want to disappoint the people who had been good enough to take her on. Why not, Gilia? They are just a piece of metal. She had seen Vane's crew, baring their chests and weapons to the midday sun. The men and women that had rescued her. Her eyes screw shut, open, flicking again at the instructions like they'd say something else this time. There had to be a way around this. There had to be -
( The sway inside of her bones grew louder, not from outside, but in, rushing to beat against the cliffs of her body, trying to get out. )
"Can you pick those up please!" Is the blurted out squeak, as close as she gets to raising her voice to almost anyone. At the first someone that crosses in front of the path between her and the weapons.
The Hunter is no more resistant than the girl. What she was asked to do, she did. It was easiest that way, kept at bay the sense that she was little more than a scrap in the wind. So she stoops, snagging up the cord and lifting it onto her shoulder. She turns then to observe the girl, had assumed it was little more than fatigue.
The murmur around her form she mistakes as a shadow for a moment... but then the definition of too many eyes makes itself known to her. Grant us--
Anna all but throws the collection of blades at the girl, stepping back. Her whip flicks loose, deft and quick. It looks like lumenkin, hiding beneath the flesh of a girl. Anna is nauseated by it, by the tendrils and lights. Her head throbs with the sounds of the sea-- the runes bound in to her from the last time she had access to the workshop resonate with a deep hum of acknowledgement. The great deep sea and the hunter.
"I knew--" she chokes out, flipping the whip as restlessly as a horse stamping a hoof. "I knew you things could follow me here."
Gilia jumps a clear foot when the swords clatter to the ground between them. The sound loud and jarring, but not so strange around so many soldiers, training, marching, working living. Her hands up to shield herself from coming near them by sheer instinct.
"Please - " confused, she darts up, to Anna. Misunderstanding what she had done to cause such offense. To cause the weapon that slithers to life, snake-like and just as terrifying. The weapons of wars that she had never seen until coming to this place. But, oh how it shows, that flickering below her skin. Defensive, now, rather than simply shimmering like ripples, it spreads through her. " - please don't hurt me. I am sorry, I am sorry for speaking so - "
The tears are just as immediate, the fear thick in the air as in her body. Her hands drawing up, curling her body away.
"Silence!" it booms out of her, louder and more defiant than she ever is when not blood-drenched and reeling with joy. "Don't weep before me like a child!"
She can hear the Orphan's screaming. She can taste the rotting sea-flesh in her mouth. She snaps the whip again, it makes Gilia's dress flutter at the hems but it doesn't hit the girl. She can hear the Orphan's screaming, wailing over its dead mother and all the tortures it endured. She remembers Ebrietas turning slowly in the dark beneath the cathedral, caged there so that the Church could experiment on her weeping children. All her many eyes catching broken dapples of light as she made wishes on her Altar of Despair.
Anna pities them, and the pity feels like poison in her body. She can't pity them. She can't pity all those who have been maimed and transmogrified in the name of mankind's ambitions. She'll lose her grip. She'll lose her grip and she'll start screaming, all over again.
"You're a nightmare," she hisses, her voice low and teeth clenched. Now she's crept up on the frightened girl, fisted one of her gloved hands in those unruly curls and jerked on her head. She looks into the set of eyes that are not Gilia's. "Will you fiends ever let me sleep? Or must I gut you here to save myself?"
No one - not even Godfinn at his worst - had touched her thus, had ever raised a hand to her. Even when her siblings needed a hiding, she never bore much of it. Too mild-mannered a child, they'd said. Which is not to know she did not know pain, for that was often required in one task or another in life. But never, never, had it been violence done towards her.
And she crumbles with it, being yanked by her hair, she is pulled down, her eyes screwed up tightly as the wet leaked down her cheeks, the shriek of pain is a miserable, pitiful, cowering sound. With it, as she trips, trying to pull herself free, but what is she to the strength of a warrior? "I am sorry. Forgive me, please, I meant no harm, I have sought none - I have obeyed every - "
The old creeds, the old laws, the binding of the pit, she had never strayed. She had never strayed. "Please, please." Her voice wails, high pitched, sobbing.
And unseen to all but Anna, the black eyes watch back, deep and pitying and so very full they seem bright. An ocean in there, and with it, Gilia's state is her own undoing, the fear, the need to protect herself is her own undoing. Every line of her strange rippled soul deepens, twists, like flowers growing too far, the coral blooms, her skin beyond just sallow. Cool, so cool to the touch.
Anna's dark eyes are feverish with despair, her face drawn and clammy. She shouldn't have ever gotten this close to the thing. Should have had her face covered and her hat pulled low to keep the influence of such things from invading her sense of herself. Should have run it through with her cane when she first saw it. They were fragile, ephemeral things trying to walk in a fetid world where they did not truly belong-- bound in forms that did not contain them. Too late now, the weapon is useless at this intimate range. It slips out of her grip. A terrible sin for a Hunter to commit.
She can't hear anything Gillia is saying. Every utterance sounds like the crash of the ocean. Incomprehensible and endless, assaulting her thoughts with its thick, grating fog of sound. She puts her other gloved hand over Gillia's mouth to make it stop. The other hand goes around her neck. Both squeeze.
"I hate you," Anna whispers in hazy, thick confession; insensate to the girl. All she can see are coral blossoms, frothing currents, and a thousand starry eyes. "Everything that you are. Every wish and promise and curse."
She squeezes tighter, her leather gloves creaking. She smells like sweat and her hair is limp on her forehead.
In the madness straining off her body, it begins to manifest, her body neither corporeal nor a solid matter. The rushing water that begins to fill her voice unleashes itself when she screams against Anna's palm, a sea in full storm, crashing loud against her palm, the inside of her body. Inside her, there is the safety as the shadows around her, deepen and deepen. The sea will protect her as it has always protected her family.
Then it is no imagining, water drips off her fingers, sliding in a drip - drip,drip - drip,drip,drip of a stream picking up it's current. Faster and faster, and even when Anna chokes the air out of her lungs ( she has never been without breath before, not even at the depths of the ocean floor ),
( Was this how Godfin felt? When the black came up around him? )
but even when the sound of her voice is finally smothered out of her, the ocean only grows louder as she... doesn't even try to push and shove to save herself. Her head getting dizzy, air fading away from her lungs.
He didn't need the scales to tell him something had gone bad - it was the sort of thing you felt in your bones, at the back of your teeth and in the hairs on your neck standing on end - but they'd tipped anyway, the little bell chiming to politely announce that something was happening.
He could move very quickly when he wanted to, his calm, patient and rather lax demeanor belying the physical fortitude he kept so well under wraps as god forbid someone think him capable of actually doing work.
He saw the conflict, he felt the rise of the tides familiar as the Ayakashi of the Dragon's Triangle and he flung the ofuda without hesitation. The little rectangles of paper encircled both Anna and Gillia.
Barriers that could both protect and, hopefully, contain. At least until he could get to the bottom of this. For a moment, he focused on the rectangular charms but no markings appeared on them. Neither were Mononoke which meant...
She collapsed with Anna to hold her up. Crumbling like a sack of dropped grain, crumbling inwards, sobbing completely outside of herself, like all this weight could not know how to hold itself together or up.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She wails it as she curls to sit half on one side, shoving her face into her hands, rocking herself in cold comfort to the ebb and flow of the tides. Her hair rapidly escaping its wimple and veil, trickling water over her clothes, her body. "Forgive me, please, please - " the only words that were in defence, pitching louder and louder as the ocean grew and grew inside of her, water pooling in her shadow like her only respite. "I did not break the accords! I did not touch them! Please, please, tell Nikolai - I never, I never - !"
It's a babble of fear, and as much sense as that has ever been to anyone. Save for that truth, surely Anna was sent here to punish her for being in a war camp, for even being sent to touch blades. It was a test and she had failed, please, please. "I do not want to go into the black, please." For surely that was what Anna's hard gloved fingers were, that same deep, deep black that smothered the light and the sea.
Distracted and confused by the merchant's interruption, she is stopped in her mission. She turns to look but more quickly than not the girl is wet and weeping on her, squalling more than ever. The frenzy at least is broken for the moment and Anna shoves Gillia off of her. Stepping backwards and looking at the pathetic thing with misery. Reminds her of the Research Hall, the blind weeping things filled with the sounds of the ocean. Every memory makes her dread tick upwards again, makes her feel nauseous and alone. She very nearly rears back to start kicking, just to make it stop make it stop make it stop--
She starts to reach for the flamesprayer at her hip instead, but doesn't make it that far.
As Gillia sank to the ground sobbing, the Medicine Seller positioned himself between the two of them - not enough that he was outright shielding Gillia, but he was watching Anna like a hawk and he could move at a split second's notice if he needed.
"What," he asked Anna in his slow, halting monotone, "has happened?"
He didn't ask Gillia - he figured it was best to let the crying run its course - at least he didn't feel like the world was going to drown at any moment. He could hear the hubbub around them - others were starting to take notice of the commotion. He'd need to end this quickly - Anna looked ill - ill and murderous and something there felt wrong and he had some idea of what Gillia was.
...Thedas could become a very dangerous place for any of them.
Her hand twitches away from the cannister under her coat as his question penetrates her haze. What has happened? Why were all his questions such endless holes.
"Nothing," she murmurs, realizing how dry her mouth is. Like she's been drinking salt water and only driving herself mad. "I laid eyes upon a thing I did not wish to see, and it stared back at me unblinking, endless."
She flicks her head, sweat and ocean flinging from her hair and face. "There is a rune writ on me, it hums with that thing. Down-reaching currents. Mine is simulacra of a voice. Hers--" an accusatory finger pointed, trembling, "--hers is not."
This is the kind of talk too many dismiss in Anna, when she sounds her maddest but is giving her most dire of warnings.
It didn't sound like madness to the Medicine Seller. It sounded like someone trying to describe something there weren't adequate words for. He'd seen it a lot, just like he had seen people broken down in sobbing messes and he likewise took it in stride.
"She is not something that needs to be slain," he said, calm and quiet but also assured. The ofuda vanished save for all but one as passersby slowed to rubberneck at what looked like some delicious drama.
He gestured to the rectangle of paper - blank as ever.
"Were she a threat, this would be covered in red writing. She is not a foe for you."
"All her secrets are a threat," the Hunter replies, but she's not looking at Gillia. She's looking off, away, out into the bleakness that is her awareness of the world. She wishes weren't here. She wishes that sea had drowned her here in the street and let her float free. No, instead she's still standing here ringing like a tuning fork.
"Desire for them drives men mad. This is no place for us"
Any of them. The girl, the merchant, herself.
She realizes then that she doesn't have her whip, and swoops for it, collapses it, hug it close to her body the way a child would hug a toy. She wishes she'd run Gillia through with it while she was still half-hypnotized by the swaying of the coral.
Only then does she look at the crying thing again. There's no apology or pity in her look, only frowning unhappiness and weariness. She opens her mouth to say something but only winces and turns back to the medicine seller.
I've no secrets she would protest, were she any other, because to her mind - save what the Seller has told her to keep to herself, she has done her best to keep to herself everything that mattered.
But as she is what she is, four eyes and all, all glitter wet and coral as soft as petals that dances to be seen and not seen, nothing comes of it. Only that she curls away from Anna's gaze, turning her body in. Wishing somehow, that her mother was here, that her fathers would do as when she was a child, and hold her until all the confusion went away.
They are not here, and she has no comfort to call on. Instead, Gilia curls her feet under her, watching the sea trickle against the deck. Drying as soon as it dripped away from her. The thick smell of salt air curling about her skin like a blanket.
Some wicked part of him wanted to say that it was humanity's own failings that drove them mad. That it was, so often, the regrets of humanity that twisted these things into the treacherous monstrosities - but he held his tongue. There was a sort of sense he could make of Anna's ramblings, that she had touched the raw, open wound of harsh truths, walked the places mortals didn't belong and that was a line of inquiry for another day. Private, away from the prying ears of those who cleaved to an absent god and sealed their prejudices with his name. The less of that trouble darkening his metaphorical doorstep, the better.
"I will take responsibility for this," he said, shifting to keep Gillia out of direct view of others. He hopes his words have some kind of assurance - he doubts it but he hopes nonetheless. He'd rather not see how this conflict would end (terribly, for everyone most likely).
She hasn't had anyone look at her so much, since she arrived, save for the brief passing of their gaze on a glowing green hand. The same hands that stay over her face as she sobs, wanting now, only to crawl away from the scrutiny. The attention without the wall of advisors to tell her what to do, what to say, leaves her bereft of what it is she's supposed to behave like. This wasn't in any of their lessons. For no one would ever dare touch her in such a way.
Still, when it is that the Medicine Seller comes back to her, she lifts her head just barely to look up at him, the same confusion on her lips. "Please, I did not do it. I swear it."
His tone wasn't sharp or angry, but there was an uncharacteristic firmness to it. Though he was usually polite to the point of passivity, there was a sense of urgency when he spoke.
"We should speak elsewhere. Can you get a hold of your abilities?"
She nods, shoulders stiff in her misery, but she nods. Then she shuts her eyes, opens her mouth and speaks as clear as she can. "Please, Father, I am safe now." The sound rushes once more of water, and then, as it came, it abates like a blanket falling over one's ears. Muffling it back to a dim far off noise, no longer beating against the senses as immediately, surely trapped back behind her skin and bones.
With it gone, or at least quiet, she begins to shakily pull herself up from the floor. Her clothes soaked to the bone, but it hardly seems to bother her.
To-ing and fro-ing is what Yngvi knows, typically, and since he's come back it's not been too different, not really. Just ignoring everyone with their knickers in a twist over the Divine not that anyone tends to ask dwarves anything but you tell yourself you get used to it. He's got his own things to fill up the hours which are mostly trundling around Kirkwall, Lowtown, Darktown, trapmaking and various sundries.
Filling the hours.
Leaping out of his skin when he's so lost in his own head, face buried in his papers at a voice he wasn't expecting that he nearly trips, flails, sidesteps-- ah, that'd be Rump Roast.
Rump Roast heading for the--
"Mind yourself, get away from it." To the nug as if the nug is going to listen although it's not the cat because the cat would listen and ignore him out of spite. "There's more of 'em-- can you just--"
He'll help but there are nugs, there's one dwarf stuffing his papers inside his coat to assist but maybe don't roll your ankle tripping over them he is not a stout fellow.
She will not touch the sword, but she does need to be told twice - she'd never let those little pink wriggly things hurt themselves on the dreadful pieces of steel. Quick as she can, she picks up Rump Roast with both hands, bundling the little sneaky creature up into her apron, holding him into her chest.
The little thing is squeaking at its sudden abduction, but she holds as fast as she would her wayward siblings, and the second there are more of them, she's trailing about after them, trying to herd them close so she can grab them all before they went for a trip somewhere dangerous.
Once this used to be his actual 'job'. (Is it a job if you don't get paid? If they just say it's your job because they say so? Questions for the small hours and whoever he can get hold of on the crystal.) Rump Roast calms down since this is generally the ideal, to be held, to be a part-time lap creature of leisure even in less than ideal circumstances as Yngvi grabs the sword before Jambonette can get to it.
There's a look between dwarf and nug but the rest are coming to see what their comrade is doing all the way up there.
It's likely a giddy height compared to the dwarf for a nug.
"Who's got you ferrying their cheap tat?" He gives the blade a twirl as if he's some great judge, puckering up his mouth into what he thinks is a rich man's moue of distaste but in all honesty looks more like bad gas. "Thought they'd be a bit leery letting people who've come from out the sky go to-and-fro with weapons when we're all panicked about old biddies who might come thundering down on us."
When the other ones come to see what has happened to their comrade - she is dutiful to their expectations of wanting to see what their friend is up to. Dutiful to their whims, she bends at the waist, lowering her arms so that the rest could jump in to join, then picks up her squirming armful of the little creatures, making sure not one is left behind.
Then she stands, to watch her present saviour.
"I do not think they much saw me as anything other than someone who might do it without other comments." She admits that much freely, adjusting as she speaks for the little creatures squirming to try and see from their new vantage point. "And I am glad to help when everyone seems so busy."
"Quick lesson on Thedas, generally speaking," he says with the sword offered out pommel first since this has been a thing ever since he's had hands to hold anything with which in the Carta tends to be 'can you stand without tipping over' and 'can you hold that without dropping it you useless lump'. "Mostly no one is anything, to anyone. There's a whole stupid terrible hierarchy to it. Someone'll always want you to do what they think they're too good to do because they've never had to think about it before. Because they've maybe never had to think before."
The nugs, who've perhaps heard this speech before as a captive audience in the room with the dwarf, happily inspect and investigate this newest person. There are hand-feet. They do what hand-feet do: wiggle and pat the way that most people are apparently horrified by as if hands are the domain of people only.
(Forgetting that a great many people would be better off without them. Nobles. Chevaliers. Grey Wardens. He's not keeping a list or anything.)
"Don't know what anyone'd be busy with right now, arguing over some dusty old woman sitting on a dusty old throne as if any of them are any different to each other to most of us but s'pose they need new things to fight over. Or pretend to."
He's being so perfectly lovely - to tell her all these things, to help her understand - is her opinion wholly made. She does her best to listen, which is to say, what she thinks of most people at the best of times, just like the Nugs. It all seemed so complicated, different, and not what she understands, far above her head and it was no longer her business to be amidst it. So she would rather avoid it all. To pay attention to more pressing matters, like holding the nugs so they did not hurt themselves.
That, they might have odd little hand feet, but she was sure they found them very useful and she had no reason to think anything other than that, as they patted. Because once they managed to get one bit of hair loose, another bit follows. Springy, easy to get tiny claws stuck in it. But as her siblings liked to do, as much fun to pull at, to watch it bounce back into shape.
"Yes, it - " she adjusts her arms when one of the nugs seems to be keen to get under the wimple where it's wrapped under her chin. " - it does seem very important to everyone. So I would like to just help, so they might sort out the business best for themselves, as otherwise it is not my place."
The nugs press closer - new person, new smells, lofty heights after trotting along on Yngvi's errands thus far that have taken them so far as Lowtown, dipping their collective toes into Darktown too - as Yngvi gives her a look. Probably a bad judge but a pretty girl from the look of it, kind if she's offering that.
"Behave yourselves, she's not here to put up with your antics. She's not Thranduil." Who is, probably, the person with hair likely to get tangled since his lady has hers out of the way usually and wouldn't let a nug get at it. (He can't imagine it.)
"D'you got one?" Which yeah, there's no way to disguise that as being anything other than a rude question but rifters come, rifters go, some ascending to lofty heights but most don't, not really and he's curious. "A place, I mean," he clarifies as he fishes the papers out his pockets again. "I'm meant to be doing Other Powers or the bastard child no one wants since we've not had a leader in forever and scouting, research, check up on how the shady bits do, give my dwarven expertise but you know--"
And he stops, swallows carefully as he takes a breath and hopes the smile is genuine. He feels it but sometimes it's difficult to know how to do this.
"You're here. So. This is your place. Same as it's anyone's place and honestly make sure you say something 'fore someone else," mages, "puts words in your mouth."
She shakes her head, no, she had no such job, no place beyond what she had been put to use for. Or as much as she can, when one of the nugs finds the warm spot next to her neck, and she didn't want to disturb it. It was fine, that shoulder is it's now.
"I've no such place, sir. I've little to offer, you see. I've never been in a - a - " she looks around so terrible suspicious, eyes darting like she was worried, so worried, that someone might hear her like her mother and brother would loom out from a corner.
So she leans in, down to him as she bends from the waist. "A war camp." The fear is plain in those words, in that little conspiratorial whisper. "I've little skills, that which they might need. I kept my family, and my families wishes, as best I could, and attended to our household at my brother's side. I do not know what skill I might possess otherwise to be much use to anyone. So I do not mind with these tasks, it seems someone must sweep the floors and mend the boots that soldiers need to march over and with."
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(open.) but my skin is soft and my hands tired of holding
no subject
The murmur around her form she mistakes as a shadow for a moment... but then the definition of too many eyes makes itself known to her. Grant us--
Anna all but throws the collection of blades at the girl, stepping back. Her whip flicks loose, deft and quick. It looks like lumenkin, hiding beneath the flesh of a girl. Anna is nauseated by it, by the tendrils and lights. Her head throbs with the sounds of the sea-- the runes bound in to her from the last time she had access to the workshop resonate with a deep hum of acknowledgement. The great deep sea and the hunter.
"I knew--" she chokes out, flipping the whip as restlessly as a horse stamping a hoof. "I knew you things could follow me here."
no subject
"Please - " confused, she darts up, to Anna. Misunderstanding what she had done to cause such offense. To cause the weapon that slithers to life, snake-like and just as terrifying. The weapons of wars that she had never seen until coming to this place. But, oh how it shows, that flickering below her skin. Defensive, now, rather than simply shimmering like ripples, it spreads through her. " - please don't hurt me. I am sorry, I am sorry for speaking so - "
The tears are just as immediate, the fear thick in the air as in her body. Her hands drawing up, curling her body away.
no subject
She can hear the Orphan's screaming. She can taste the rotting sea-flesh in her mouth. She snaps the whip again, it makes Gilia's dress flutter at the hems but it doesn't hit the girl. She can hear the Orphan's screaming, wailing over its dead mother and all the tortures it endured. She remembers Ebrietas turning slowly in the dark beneath the cathedral, caged there so that the Church could experiment on her weeping children. All her many eyes catching broken dapples of light as she made wishes on her Altar of Despair.
Anna pities them, and the pity feels like poison in her body. She can't pity them. She can't pity all those who have been maimed and transmogrified in the name of mankind's ambitions. She'll lose her grip. She'll lose her grip and she'll start screaming, all over again.
"You're a nightmare," she hisses, her voice low and teeth clenched. Now she's crept up on the frightened girl, fisted one of her gloved hands in those unruly curls and jerked on her head. She looks into the set of eyes that are not Gilia's. "Will you fiends ever let me sleep? Or must I gut you here to save myself?"
no subject
And she crumbles with it, being yanked by her hair, she is pulled down, her eyes screwed up tightly as the wet leaked down her cheeks, the shriek of pain is a miserable, pitiful, cowering sound. With it, as she trips, trying to pull herself free, but what is she to the strength of a warrior? "I am sorry. Forgive me, please, I meant no harm, I have sought none - I have obeyed every - "
The old creeds, the old laws, the binding of the pit, she had never strayed. She had never strayed. "Please, please." Her voice wails, high pitched, sobbing.
And unseen to all but Anna, the black eyes watch back, deep and pitying and so very full they seem bright. An ocean in there, and with it, Gilia's state is her own undoing, the fear, the need to protect herself is her own undoing. Every line of her strange rippled soul deepens, twists, like flowers growing too far, the coral blooms, her skin beyond just sallow. Cool, so cool to the touch.
no subject
She can't hear anything Gillia is saying. Every utterance sounds like the crash of the ocean. Incomprehensible and endless, assaulting her thoughts with its thick, grating fog of sound. She puts her other gloved hand over Gillia's mouth to make it stop. The other hand goes around her neck. Both squeeze.
"I hate you," Anna whispers in hazy, thick confession; insensate to the girl. All she can see are coral blossoms, frothing currents, and a thousand starry eyes. "Everything that you are. Every wish and promise and curse."
She squeezes tighter, her leather gloves creaking. She smells like sweat and her hair is limp on her forehead.
"You can't stay."
no subject
Then it is no imagining, water drips off her fingers, sliding in a drip - drip,drip - drip,drip,drip of a stream picking up it's current. Faster and faster, and even when Anna chokes the air out of her lungs ( she has never been without breath before, not even at the depths of the ocean floor ),
( Was this how Godfin felt? When the black came up around him? )
but even when the sound of her voice is finally smothered out of her, the ocean only grows louder as she... doesn't even try to push and shove to save herself. Her head getting dizzy, air fading away from her lungs.
no subject
He could move very quickly when he wanted to, his calm, patient and rather lax demeanor belying the physical fortitude he kept so well under wraps as god forbid someone think him capable of actually doing work.
He saw the conflict, he felt the rise of the tides familiar as the Ayakashi of the Dragon's Triangle and he flung the ofuda without hesitation. The little rectangles of paper encircled both Anna and Gillia.
Barriers that could both protect and, hopefully, contain. At least until he could get to the bottom of this. For a moment, he focused on the rectangular charms but no markings appeared on them. Neither were Mononoke which meant...
"Lady Gillia - please get a hold of yourself."
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"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She wails it as she curls to sit half on one side, shoving her face into her hands, rocking herself in cold comfort to the ebb and flow of the tides. Her hair rapidly escaping its wimple and veil, trickling water over her clothes, her body. "Forgive me, please, please - " the only words that were in defence, pitching louder and louder as the ocean grew and grew inside of her, water pooling in her shadow like her only respite. "I did not break the accords! I did not touch them! Please, please, tell Nikolai - I never, I never - !"
It's a babble of fear, and as much sense as that has ever been to anyone. Save for that truth, surely Anna was sent here to punish her for being in a war camp, for even being sent to touch blades. It was a test and she had failed, please, please. "I do not want to go into the black, please." For surely that was what Anna's hard gloved fingers were, that same deep, deep black that smothered the light and the sea.
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She starts to reach for the flamesprayer at her hip instead, but doesn't make it that far.
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"What," he asked Anna in his slow, halting monotone, "has happened?"
He didn't ask Gillia - he figured it was best to let the crying run its course - at least he didn't feel like the world was going to drown at any moment. He could hear the hubbub around them - others were starting to take notice of the commotion. He'd need to end this quickly - Anna looked ill - ill and murderous and something there felt wrong and he had some idea of what Gillia was.
...Thedas could become a very dangerous place for any of them.
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"Nothing," she murmurs, realizing how dry her mouth is. Like she's been drinking salt water and only driving herself mad. "I laid eyes upon a thing I did not wish to see, and it stared back at me unblinking, endless."
She flicks her head, sweat and ocean flinging from her hair and face. "There is a rune writ on me, it hums with that thing. Down-reaching currents. Mine is simulacra of a voice. Hers--" an accusatory finger pointed, trembling, "--hers is not."
This is the kind of talk too many dismiss in Anna, when she sounds her maddest but is giving her most dire of warnings.
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"She is not something that needs to be slain," he said, calm and quiet but also assured. The ofuda vanished save for all but one as passersby slowed to rubberneck at what looked like some delicious drama.
He gestured to the rectangle of paper - blank as ever.
"Were she a threat, this would be covered in red writing. She is not a foe for you."
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"Desire for them drives men mad. This is no place for us"
Any of them. The girl, the merchant, herself.
She realizes then that she doesn't have her whip, and swoops for it, collapses it, hug it close to her body the way a child would hug a toy. She wishes she'd run Gillia through with it while she was still half-hypnotized by the swaying of the coral.
Only then does she look at the crying thing again. There's no apology or pity in her look, only frowning unhappiness and weariness. She opens her mouth to say something but only winces and turns back to the medicine seller.
"I'll... leave her to you..."
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But as she is what she is, four eyes and all, all glitter wet and coral as soft as petals that dances to be seen and not seen, nothing comes of it. Only that she curls away from Anna's gaze, turning her body in. Wishing somehow, that her mother was here, that her fathers would do as when she was a child, and hold her until all the confusion went away.
They are not here, and she has no comfort to call on. Instead, Gilia curls her feet under her, watching the sea trickle against the deck. Drying as soon as it dripped away from her. The thick smell of salt air curling about her skin like a blanket.
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"I will take responsibility for this," he said, shifting to keep Gillia out of direct view of others. He hopes his words have some kind of assurance - he doubts it but he hopes nonetheless. He'd rather not see how this conflict would end (terribly, for everyone most likely).
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Still, when it is that the Medicine Seller comes back to her, she lifts her head just barely to look up at him, the same confusion on her lips. "Please, I did not do it. I swear it."
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"We should speak elsewhere. Can you get a hold of your abilities?"
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With it gone, or at least quiet, she begins to shakily pull herself up from the floor. Her clothes soaked to the bone, but it hardly seems to bother her.
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Filling the hours.
Leaping out of his skin when he's so lost in his own head, face buried in his papers at a voice he wasn't expecting that he nearly trips, flails, sidesteps-- ah, that'd be Rump Roast.
Rump Roast heading for the--
"Mind yourself, get away from it." To the nug as if the nug is going to listen although it's not the cat because the cat would listen and ignore him out of spite. "There's more of 'em-- can you just--"
He'll help but there are nugs, there's one dwarf stuffing his papers inside his coat to assist but maybe don't roll your ankle tripping over them he is not a stout fellow.
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She will not touch the sword, but she does need to be told twice - she'd never let those little pink wriggly things hurt themselves on the dreadful pieces of steel. Quick as she can, she picks up Rump Roast with both hands, bundling the little sneaky creature up into her apron, holding him into her chest.
The little thing is squeaking at its sudden abduction, but she holds as fast as she would her wayward siblings, and the second there are more of them, she's trailing about after them, trying to herd them close so she can grab them all before they went for a trip somewhere dangerous.
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There's a look between dwarf and nug but the rest are coming to see what their comrade is doing all the way up there.
It's likely a giddy height compared to the dwarf for a nug.
"Who's got you ferrying their cheap tat?" He gives the blade a twirl as if he's some great judge, puckering up his mouth into what he thinks is a rich man's moue of distaste but in all honesty looks more like bad gas. "Thought they'd be a bit leery letting people who've come from out the sky go to-and-fro with weapons when we're all panicked about old biddies who might come thundering down on us."
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Then she stands, to watch her present saviour.
"I do not think they much saw me as anything other than someone who might do it without other comments." She admits that much freely, adjusting as she speaks for the little creatures squirming to try and see from their new vantage point. "And I am glad to help when everyone seems so busy."
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The nugs, who've perhaps heard this speech before as a captive audience in the room with the dwarf, happily inspect and investigate this newest person. There are hand-feet. They do what hand-feet do: wiggle and pat the way that most people are apparently horrified by as if hands are the domain of people only.
(Forgetting that a great many people would be better off without them. Nobles. Chevaliers. Grey Wardens. He's not keeping a list or anything.)
"Don't know what anyone'd be busy with right now, arguing over some dusty old woman sitting on a dusty old throne as if any of them are any different to each other to most of us but s'pose they need new things to fight over. Or pretend to."
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That, they might have odd little hand feet, but she was sure they found them very useful and she had no reason to think anything other than that, as they patted. Because once they managed to get one bit of hair loose, another bit follows. Springy, easy to get tiny claws stuck in it. But as her siblings liked to do, as much fun to pull at, to watch it bounce back into shape.
"Yes, it - " she adjusts her arms when one of the nugs seems to be keen to get under the wimple where it's wrapped under her chin. " - it does seem very important to everyone. So I would like to just help, so they might sort out the business best for themselves, as otherwise it is not my place."
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"Behave yourselves, she's not here to put up with your antics. She's not Thranduil." Who is, probably, the person with hair likely to get tangled since his lady has hers out of the way usually and wouldn't let a nug get at it. (He can't imagine it.)
"D'you got one?" Which yeah, there's no way to disguise that as being anything other than a rude question but rifters come, rifters go, some ascending to lofty heights but most don't, not really and he's curious. "A place, I mean," he clarifies as he fishes the papers out his pockets again. "I'm meant to be doing Other Powers or the bastard child no one wants since we've not had a leader in forever and scouting, research, check up on how the shady bits do, give my dwarven expertise but you know--"
And he stops, swallows carefully as he takes a breath and hopes the smile is genuine. He feels it but sometimes it's difficult to know how to do this.
"You're here. So. This is your place. Same as it's anyone's place and honestly make sure you say something 'fore someone else," mages, "puts words in your mouth."
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"I've no such place, sir. I've little to offer, you see. I've never been in a - a - " she looks around so terrible suspicious, eyes darting like she was worried, so worried, that someone might hear her like her mother and brother would loom out from a corner.
So she leans in, down to him as she bends from the waist. "A war camp." The fear is plain in those words, in that little conspiratorial whisper. "I've little skills, that which they might need. I kept my family, and my families wishes, as best I could, and attended to our household at my brother's side. I do not know what skill I might possess otherwise to be much use to anyone. So I do not mind with these tasks, it seems someone must sweep the floors and mend the boots that soldiers need to march over and with."