open: lol never mind.

[cozen]

WHO: Open!
WHAT: A memorial that doesn’t go as planned.
WHEN: Justinian 1
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Nah.

The ceremony takes place in one of the side courtyards that’s been converted into a garden, where the oppressive architecture is offset with flowers and trees. There’s a small pyre, for those whose traditions call for pyres, but no bodies to burn. Instead there are tokens, flowers, favorite foods, treasured possessions—not yet lit.

(For the others, the Dalish and Nevarrans and anyone else with a different wish, their friends and family will have made different arrangements alongside the pyre, probably, if they aren’t universally reviled.)

Anyone who wants to speak, whether it’s a prepared speech or a single spontaneous sentence, can do so. The tone is respectful but only so solemn. It’s been more than a week. For many, the worst of the shock has passed, and the sun has continued to rise and set, and there’s room between bouts of misery for fond memories and occasionally laughter. The memorial is a door that’s closing—slowly, kindly—and tomorrow, on the other side of it, the war will continue.

Today, on this side, the only people judging anyone else for crying are the assholes.

***

Across the harbor, more than a dozen filthy and tired people come to a stop on the docks, and the loitering ferryman pauses to take stock of them, then starts laughing. There isn’t even any local mythology about ferrymen and the dead. It’s just that funny to him on its own, that he’s been rowing miserable people around all week, and here’s the source of all that misery, dirty and tired but significantly less dead than believed.

When he stops laughing, he offers to dunk everyone in the harbor before rowing them over. For the smell, you know. No one is going to be happy to see them if their eyes are watering too much to actually see them. Then he laughs some more at his hilarious joke.

But he does eventually load up his boat—and maybe there isn’t room for everyone all at once, maybe some dramatic reunions will be delayed, maybe some people will be even more fashionably late to their funeral than the others—and carries everyone across the bay, still chuckling intermittently.

***

In the courtyard, the speeches and anecdotes (and singing, perhaps) wind down to long silences peppered with murmurs or sniffling. Someone is preparing to light the pyre. And then the gate creaks open.

Comments

[gentlecountry]

And Barty, as fluent in punch-drunk as anyone can be, gives her a minute to wince up at him. He blinks back, frowns, and then looks out at the water.

"Boats nearly here," He says, belatedly, because by now it's true; the boatman, still chuckling to himself is only a dozen yards out, and making his slow, steady progress, "You are headings 'cross the ways? This ain't no bedsroom, if you don't minds me pointing out the obvious."

[circleprodigy]

And then, from a short distance away, is the sound of exciting whining and the quick tread of mabari paws. Garahel rushes over to Teren and Barty, barking and wiggling as though he's a puppy all over again, only his training ensuring that Teren isn't squashed underneath his bulk. But he's hardly quiet or unobtrusive, being the lovable wall of muscle that he is.

Soft footsteps follow in his wake, pace quickening and then coming to an abrupt halt. Despite the fact that Inessa was now aware that certain deaths had been declared premature, she still found herself staring in shock. She had been the only Grey Warden left...and now she had them back again, and more.

[doneisdone]

Teren's response to Garahel is little more than a plaintive grunt-- Maker, not the dog, not now-- and she leans away from him with one hand firmly on his head, both giving him a pat and preventing him from licking her face.
"Who're you," she mutters to Barty, moving as though to stand, but the wiggling mabari hinders her balance and she plops back down again.

[gentlecountry]

"Don'ts you just worry abouts that," Barty replies, soothingly, and gives Inessa a nod as he offers Teren a hand back up onto her feet, "I'm not here to cause any troubles."

And then he gives her a longer stare. Young, despite the hair, very pretty, elven...Griffon? His eyebrows are a thunderstorm, gathering on the horizon; he opens his mouth to comment, then seems to think better of it. Then he thinks of some better comment to say...and discards it. What is happening in this city?

"Miss. Woulds this be a friend of yours?"

[circleprodigy]

"Teren!" Barty's presence is registered with a small nod, but Inessa is focused on the woman she'd not seen in some time and thought dead for a good portion of it. Shushing Garahel (who still wags his tail excitedly at everyone while managing to wiggle a bit less), she closes in and looks over Teren, both relieved and yet concerned as to her state.

"Oh, thank the Maker, we'd thought--it doesn't matter." Instantly, she looks Teren over; if she has signs of injury anywhere (beyond exhaustion), Inessa won't hesitate to cast Heal. "Garahel, I know you're happy, but let her have a little space. Let me see her, okay?" The mabari whines a little, but he does as told.

[doneisdone]

Barty's hand gets an odd look as Teren stubbornly resists accepting it, but rises to her feet once allowed by Garahel and looks between the other two.
"You're a Warden," she observes to Barty, holding still while Inessa does her once-over: there are cuts and bruises here and there, but Anders being around meant there's nothing worse that needs tending.

[gentlecountry]

"Yes, ma'am, guilty as charged," Barty replies, unbothered by the stinkeye from what appears to be a old homeless lady— or would, if not for the Griffon and the young Warden accompanying her with obvious familiarity, and of course... The Griffon.

He won't be getting over that, anytime soon.

"I expects we'll has to have a conversation abouts it, soon enoughs."