He nods, still staring at the fire. Of course he sees some of her reaction--the stiffening of her face, at least, the way it looks like she closes a window--all out of the corner of his eye. Weighs it up with the rest of her, and everything she's said.
"Mine as well," he says, eventually. There's a feeling like a rock in his chest, some little pebble wedged in his breastbone. He ignores it. "So it can't all be what you learn, can it. What you see around you. Or else there'd not be us."
He picks up a twig but doesn't cast it immediately into the fire. Begins stripping the bark off of it with his thumbnail instead, slowly peeling it bare, exposing the flesh underneath that stands out stark like bone.
"'Course they were going to give me to the Circle. I was small. I barely remember it. But I know, even before--everything--" The stable, flames licking eagerly at the walls, a great plume of smoke against the blue of the sky. "They were cowards before, too. Keep your head down and don't make trouble. Stay where you are. Sell out anyone to keep yourself safe. And that's not me. I'd never."
There's a few secrets that Matthias keeps close. This one he's told before. Who didn't sit about a fire telling shit about their past? It was how you knew you could trust someone.
Still. Every time he says it, the words, the story, it loses something. Or that's the way it feels, anyways. Words that sap power out of something, take away life. If it's life that he can't really remember anyways, does it matter? It ought to. Anymore it all feels so far off, like it happened to someone else. Only seven years ago, but a hundred other things have taken the place of those memories, made them small in the face of war and battle and causes that meant something.
"My sister," he says, pulling down another strip of bark, "killed someone. Or they said she did anyways. She came home, to the village. She was hiding. S' what they told me later. And my parents had to give her up, so--" Another strip of bark; only the knots are still brown. "So they gave her up. But they didn't have to. I wasn't even ten years of age and I knew they didn't have to. Or maybe I knew that bit later, I dunno, I can't--sort it out, properly. Would have hanged for it, but she was killed before any of it got that far. Left out for the wolves and all--they had to do that as well--so I reckon she's some sort of wraith since they didn't burn her."
He pushes flakes of bark off of his knee, then flicks the bone-white twig into the fire. It catches, in a flash, burns up.
"S'ppose that's really massive. But there were half a hundred little things as well, I'm sure of it. Like--not giving to beggars 'cause who knows what they'll do with the coin. Keeping watch out for anyone they were told to, just 'cause they were told to by someone on a horse. Branding any sheep that came in the fold and not trying to sort out if they belonged or not."
She's quiet a long moment. Finally, she starts in - "My mum and dad - " And then immediately she shakes her head, because how unbearable is it? He tells his story, and then she starts in talking about herself and her parents. What does he care? Why would he care? It's all so stupid. Unless maybe it's not, unless sharing this story might make him feel a little less alone or...something...Kitty sits, and fidgets, and tries to figure out whether telling her story would make things better or worse, until finally she decides that she's started anyway and it'll just seem stupid and self-indulgent if she doesn't finish, so here she goes.
"My mum and dad did that to me, too. Wasn't killed for it, obviously - here I am - but."
Then she shrugs, one-shouldered, and tries desperately to think of some lesson to append onto the end of it, so that it's not just her whinging about her problems. Failing to find that, she offers the best thing she can think of - an awkward, uncertain, "Sorry. That they did that."
He'd looked around when she'd started talking, attention snagged by sound alone. Then he really looks.
Not that she's Annora. He's not stupid. She's her, and Annora was Annora, and there's no blending of them in his eyes--not that he remembers Annora anyways, not properly, not anything more than a little, but--
"No," he says, quickly, the word falling out and landing, heavy, "I mean, it was them, you know it better'n anyone, if-- It wasn't--" No, stop. He sits a little straighter, trying to fit himself up into some shape that isn't a child, slumped shouldered, stupid and thick. And then he just says, "I know. Yeah."
And for a minute, that's enough. The two of them, sat together. Not that it makes it any better. But it makes a difference, still being here. Both of them. No matter what else came before. He goes on looking at her a moment, a little too hard. Not looking for anything, only-- looking.
"They say Rifters aren't-- I mean, that you're lot, you're-- demons, or dreams," he says, eventually. "Outside of Riftwatch, I mean."
Sympathy would have been unbearable. Indifference would have been unbearable. What he does - that awkward little shrug that she feels and hears rather than sees (because she can't look at him right now, certainly not) and the stumbling, miserable stutter, and the silence - That's nice. That's enough.
Of all the people to understand, and of all the people to understand her, how funny that it's a mage. She'd never have dreamed it back home. But here she is.
"That's what they say." She draws in a breath. "Might even be true. But it just makes it even more true that it matters what we do here, right?"
"Yeah. Well, I dunno if it's true," he says, sucking in a great breath of his own and holding it, cautiously. The Maker doesn't strike him down for having said it. No tears from Andraste fall out of the sky. And Kitty doesn't suddenly tear out of her skin and strip out to be a demon, leering at him for having fallen for her brilliant trick, you sympathized with me, you're done for, my son, so, that's--fine.
Matthias looks up at the sky and lets his breath out. Still, nothing happens, so he goes on.
"Demons're tricky and all, but. They'd still have to lie to say anything like--that. S'not a lie." He knows it. A feeling, like. "But it's mental, isn't it. You ending up here. Not because of what you've said, or anything, just. What else is out there? And what's the point of you being here? I don't mean that badly, like, only-- there has to be something to it, right?"
"D'you suppose?" she asks, rather dubiously. Now she looks round at him, now that they're on firmer ground - postulating and hypothesizing, that's the stuff she likes. "I mean, no good reason that Corypheus got free, is there, and no good reason that rifts open up. None that I can think of, anyways. And it's certainly not like we Rifters are some heroes sent by the Maker to undo the damage that's been done, even if the Maker were just enough to do that sort of thing - I mean, you've met us. We're more difficult than we are heroic."
Another shrug. "It'd be nice if there were some meaning to it. But really, I think it's that - things are weird, and we're part of the weirdness." A sigh. "Which is utterly dreadful, you know. To just be this...this - freak accident."
"Even heroes aren't heroic." Matthias shoves the fall of his fringe out of his face, curls that swoop down too low and fall into his eyes. He needs a haircut, is what he needs. Maybe later. It's not exactly an option, here and now.
Anyways.
"People're just people. If someone has a story told of them, then it's 'cause they've done something--but they're still only a person, really. That's got to be kept in mind or you'll end up frustrated. So your lots s'no different. But it's like--" He leans forward on the log that he's sat on, with a gleam to his eye. This is something that he's thought of. Something that he's heard, before. "People only become heroes afterward. Proper heroes, I mean. And it's only afterward that you can see how it all fit together. Maybe that's the same here. It seems like a freak accident, and all, but in a hundred years, it'll make sense. Like standing up close to a tapestry. All you see is the threads and the colors and all. You've got to go across the room to see the pattern of it. See what it's really about."
Kitty listens - and then, at the end, she laughs. It's not a cruel sound. Kitty, for all her faults, isn't someone who laughs cruelly. Honestly, she actually not really someone who laughs much at all - so there's a slightly awkward bark to it, a sound made by someone who has the general idea of amusement but has forgotten some of the details.
"That's actually a bit wise, you know." She cants a smile over at him - a little wry, but real. Warm, for all her usual defensive remove. "Better'n I expected from you."
Matthias can take teasing, and can give as good as he gets. He can weather laughter, though he prefers it to be with, and not at, no matter how good-natured and wry it is. Still reminds him of being expected to act a trick dog with mages older than him. A mascot, but one determined to elbow into the inner circle and speak for the kids, and put off the laughter.
But his sincerity is still his downfall, a soft spot to press a finger to and make him flinch. He flinches now, at first--and color flushes his face, spreads from the ears down, and makes him feel hot all over. Stupid. It's not that she thinks him stupid, she clears that up a moment later--holding back the true compliment, couching it with wryness--so that's good, but. Still. Matthias scowls, a little, and scrubs at his face with his shirtsleeve, like he can wipe off his embarrassment, and the redness that is making his cheeks practically glow.
"Oh," he says, sarcastically, his one shield against the horror that he's feeling, "thanks ever so. Glad I proved myself. Look, it's not," but what is it not; he swallows the words and looks into the fire. "I didn't mean it like wisdom. Or like--something you'd not thought of before. I don't want to lecture, I'm only saying. Heard it from someone else anyways." --all of it trailed off by the end, falling to muttering.
"Doesn't make it not wise," she returns. She looks up after - it's a little too dark out there to catch the redness of his face, but there's something endearingly recognizable about the way he rubs his nose and the way he mumbles that she actually wants to be gentler with him.
"And it's good. It's nice. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. They're good ones, you know."
Well. That's nice. Like a rope tossed in to the bog of embarrassment. Matthias grabs at it, and tries not to feel too foolish for holding to niceties with such fervor. Can't be helped, sort of.
"Good," he says, and then, "thanks," and he does mean it. She could have gone in the other direction. Made him feel stupider, pressed harder, something; it's possible to be made to feel stupider. People have done it to him quite a bit. Mock that idiotic earnest brightness that he can't lose or dim.
And then, because he doesn't know what to do with that, or what to say next, to her, Matthias stands abruptly and tugs at his cloak, pulling it into place around him.
"I'm going to go piss," he announces, unnecessarily, "so--see you. I'll be back."
What Matthias actually does is climb, somewhat clumsily, to his feet, and stamp against the ground a bit, getting feeling back into his legs. The way he'd been sitting had cramped them up something nasty, put that pins-and-needles feeling in him.
Then he ducks off into the darkness and walks a few paces off, pulling his hood up so it will protect him from the rain, which is coming down quite steadily, if not all that hard. The damp roughspun of his cloak pulls heavy on his coatrack shoulders. The firelight is behind him, a little bright smudge in the darkness. It will be easy to find the way back, so Matthias allows himself to walk off a fair distance before he sits down beneath a tree, sink his arse into wet undergrowth and leaves. He puts his hands over his face, fingers pressed into his eyes, palms down by his mouth. Breathing in the gap between his hands, sucking in great lungfuls of air that both smells and tastes of wet, and rotten wood.
Just a minute of that. Then he pulls himself to his feet and turns back, following the way back to the firelight and Kitty, taking great care to make a load of noise so she knows he's coming. He sits down beside her again, shaking out his cloak.
"So what's your place like, where you're from? Your country, like." World. "Beside the bit about mages. Have you got, I dunno. Clocks? Cakes? Eyeglasses?"
Kitty had not been feeling so many emotions in that time when Matthias was gone. She had, rather, just been taking a moment to think about how Matthias was all right, all things considered, and how that was a rather nice surprise. He hadn't seemed very all right before - hadn't seemed much of anything, really - but he's actually rather clever, under all the loudness, and he means what he says. Surrounded as she is by cynics and jokers, it's nice to talk to someone who really believes. Even Nikos - the closest one she knows to someone like her - even he's embittered by it all. So Matthias is nice to talk to.
"Of course we've got all that. London's got everything," Kitty says with the singular confidence of someone who had only been in one place all her life. "More than that, even. We've got - stuff they haven't thought of, here in Thedas. Like carriages that don't need horses to drive them, and airplanes - that's flying machines bigger than dragons that you can ride inside of. Telephones, they're like sending crystals except that they're cheap, everyone's got one. Typewriters - that's like a personal printing press, sort of, so you can write up anything - and pens with replaceable cartridges, we don't need inkwells or anything, and lifts so we don't need to climb up all those bloody stairs, we can just ride up. And toilets. And running water, in lots of houses, at least. We've got it in ours. Hot running water. And electricity, and radiators, and..."
And, and, and. She's been talking far too long, she realizes. And so she cuts herself off, and flushes very faintly, and says, "Lots of stuff. Sorry. Did you fall down? You've got some leaves stuck on your backside."
A little flush comes into his ears, blessedly hidden by his hood. Matthias rocks himself forward into a crouch, so he can brush hastily at the leaves. Damn. But there's a lot to go over, in the long list that she's said. Running water--like a brook? Hot running water--that'd be a hot springs, surely. Electricity, that's a word he sort of knows--lighting, or the static that comes of rubbing your hands together when you've got wool mittens on, or even chewing mint in the dark and letting the sparks pop out of your mouth, a sort of lame game that Matthias has made much of--raddyators--
"Wouldn't catch me in a bloody flying machine," he says, as he sinks to sit back down again. "What's driving the carriage if there's no horses?"
"Magic," she answers simply. "It's all done by magic."
A fact which quells her enthusiasm. It's things she misses, all of that - being warm, really warm, even in the depths of winter, and not having to rely on the limited heat a fire puts off - but it's all made by unethical hands, isn't it? Better to be without it than to be given it at the cost of her own freedom and the freedom of others. Better to be here than there.
"Magic, driving carriages? I thought mages were tops, where you're from. So why're they going about wasting their magic on driving carriages when there's horses about that could just do it for them." Hang on. "There are horses, right?"
"There's horses, yeah," she responds with a shrug. "You see the cops riding 'em sometimes. That's how you know they're all right cops, 'cause horses won't stand being near one of the Night Police."
Not relevant information for Matthias; he's not a new recruit she's teaching the ways of the world. So: "It's not like a magician's got to be sitting in there constantly making it go. They have magicians - lower-level magicians, obviously, not the sort who'll get to be Prime Minister and all that - They have them working in factories, sitting in a nice cushy office, and soon as commoners have finished losing fingers or hands to the brutal machines that build the cars, the magicians wave their hands to make them go. And everyone says, Oh, yes, so-and-so built this car. And that name isn't a commoner's."
Second to the cause of the mages is the cause of poor people, who are constantly being trodden on and ignored. And Matthias would know, as he is those people. "So there's levels to it? I thought it was, you know. All mages being shit. Magicians," he corrects, "sorry. But it's a stupid word. Not that I s'ppose you care about it sounding stupid. And the Night Police, that's like--magicians who are guards, then?"
She shakes her head. "They're werewolves," she answers. "Specially bred and trained to be obedient to the magicians. They're supposed to bring in political dissidents, but - well - a lot of the time, they just - you know. Eat whoever it is they're after, instead." She stares glumly at her knees. "Not that that's a bad thing, really. It's kept us safe more than once, someone getting killed 'stead of taken to the Tower."
Then she looks up. That was maybe too much of a confession, but...As she'd decided earlier: Matthias is all right. And it's not like he doesn't know a thing or two about dodging the authorities, right? He's never discussed it with her directly, but it doesn't take a genius to know that he was part of the mage rebellion.
"But yeah - I mean, it's like Tevinter, right? There are some that are on top, and some below them scrabbling for an advantage. Doesn't make them good. Just different."
He pulls a little face at the thought of people getting eaten, with enough regularity to merit Kitty's a lot of the time. Disgusting. And unfair. Only from the context he can tell that the Tower must be some grim place, likely of torture--and he knows enough to know how someone dying is sometimes safer. And better for them as well, really, in the end. Poor souls.
"That's true. Yeah. About it being like Tevinter, I mean. Just seems different, but I reckon that's 'cause I don't know much about it. I don't know much about Tevinter, really," which he cops to with a bit of a grimace. "They're sort of mental. S' like Nevarra. Death and weirdies there. And Tevinter is just weirdies with slaves."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
"Mine as well," he says, eventually. There's a feeling like a rock in his chest, some little pebble wedged in his breastbone. He ignores it. "So it can't all be what you learn, can it. What you see around you. Or else there'd not be us."
no subject
"'Cause they sent you to the Circle?" she hazards.
no subject
He picks up a twig but doesn't cast it immediately into the fire. Begins stripping the bark off of it with his thumbnail instead, slowly peeling it bare, exposing the flesh underneath that stands out stark like bone.
"'Course they were going to give me to the Circle. I was small. I barely remember it. But I know, even before--everything--" The stable, flames licking eagerly at the walls, a great plume of smoke against the blue of the sky. "They were cowards before, too. Keep your head down and don't make trouble. Stay where you are. Sell out anyone to keep yourself safe. And that's not me. I'd never."
no subject
no subject
Still. Every time he says it, the words, the story, it loses something. Or that's the way it feels, anyways. Words that sap power out of something, take away life. If it's life that he can't really remember anyways, does it matter? It ought to. Anymore it all feels so far off, like it happened to someone else. Only seven years ago, but a hundred other things have taken the place of those memories, made them small in the face of war and battle and causes that meant something.
"My sister," he says, pulling down another strip of bark, "killed someone. Or they said she did anyways. She came home, to the village. She was hiding. S' what they told me later. And my parents had to give her up, so--" Another strip of bark; only the knots are still brown. "So they gave her up. But they didn't have to. I wasn't even ten years of age and I knew they didn't have to. Or maybe I knew that bit later, I dunno, I can't--sort it out, properly. Would have hanged for it, but she was killed before any of it got that far. Left out for the wolves and all--they had to do that as well--so I reckon she's some sort of wraith since they didn't burn her."
He pushes flakes of bark off of his knee, then flicks the bone-white twig into the fire. It catches, in a flash, burns up.
"S'ppose that's really massive. But there were half a hundred little things as well, I'm sure of it. Like--not giving to beggars 'cause who knows what they'll do with the coin. Keeping watch out for anyone they were told to, just 'cause they were told to by someone on a horse. Branding any sheep that came in the fold and not trying to sort out if they belonged or not."
no subject
"My mum and dad did that to me, too. Wasn't killed for it, obviously - here I am - but."
Then she shrugs, one-shouldered, and tries desperately to think of some lesson to append onto the end of it, so that it's not just her whinging about her problems. Failing to find that, she offers the best thing she can think of - an awkward, uncertain, "Sorry. That they did that."
no subject
Not that she's Annora. He's not stupid. She's her, and Annora was Annora, and there's no blending of them in his eyes--not that he remembers Annora anyways, not properly, not anything more than a little, but--
"No," he says, quickly, the word falling out and landing, heavy, "I mean, it was them, you know it better'n anyone, if-- It wasn't--" No, stop. He sits a little straighter, trying to fit himself up into some shape that isn't a child, slumped shouldered, stupid and thick. And then he just says, "I know. Yeah."
And for a minute, that's enough. The two of them, sat together. Not that it makes it any better. But it makes a difference, still being here. Both of them. No matter what else came before. He goes on looking at her a moment, a little too hard. Not looking for anything, only-- looking.
"They say Rifters aren't-- I mean, that you're lot, you're-- demons, or dreams," he says, eventually. "Outside of Riftwatch, I mean."
no subject
Of all the people to understand, and of all the people to understand her, how funny that it's a mage. She'd never have dreamed it back home. But here she is.
"That's what they say." She draws in a breath. "Might even be true. But it just makes it even more true that it matters what we do here, right?"
no subject
Matthias looks up at the sky and lets his breath out. Still, nothing happens, so he goes on.
"Demons're tricky and all, but. They'd still have to lie to say anything like--that. S'not a lie." He knows it. A feeling, like. "But it's mental, isn't it. You ending up here. Not because of what you've said, or anything, just. What else is out there? And what's the point of you being here? I don't mean that badly, like, only-- there has to be something to it, right?"
no subject
Another shrug. "It'd be nice if there were some meaning to it. But really, I think it's that - things are weird, and we're part of the weirdness." A sigh. "Which is utterly dreadful, you know. To just be this...this - freak accident."
no subject
Anyways.
"People're just people. If someone has a story told of them, then it's 'cause they've done something--but they're still only a person, really. That's got to be kept in mind or you'll end up frustrated. So your lots s'no different. But it's like--" He leans forward on the log that he's sat on, with a gleam to his eye. This is something that he's thought of. Something that he's heard, before. "People only become heroes afterward. Proper heroes, I mean. And it's only afterward that you can see how it all fit together. Maybe that's the same here. It seems like a freak accident, and all, but in a hundred years, it'll make sense. Like standing up close to a tapestry. All you see is the threads and the colors and all. You've got to go across the room to see the pattern of it. See what it's really about."
no subject
"That's actually a bit wise, you know." She cants a smile over at him - a little wry, but real. Warm, for all her usual defensive remove. "Better'n I expected from you."
no subject
But his sincerity is still his downfall, a soft spot to press a finger to and make him flinch. He flinches now, at first--and color flushes his face, spreads from the ears down, and makes him feel hot all over. Stupid. It's not that she thinks him stupid, she clears that up a moment later--holding back the true compliment, couching it with wryness--so that's good, but. Still. Matthias scowls, a little, and scrubs at his face with his shirtsleeve, like he can wipe off his embarrassment, and the redness that is making his cheeks practically glow.
"Oh," he says, sarcastically, his one shield against the horror that he's feeling, "thanks ever so. Glad I proved myself. Look, it's not," but what is it not; he swallows the words and looks into the fire. "I didn't mean it like wisdom. Or like--something you'd not thought of before. I don't want to lecture, I'm only saying. Heard it from someone else anyways." --all of it trailed off by the end, falling to muttering.
no subject
"And it's good. It's nice. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. They're good ones, you know."
no subject
"Good," he says, and then, "thanks," and he does mean it. She could have gone in the other direction. Made him feel stupider, pressed harder, something; it's possible to be made to feel stupider. People have done it to him quite a bit. Mock that idiotic earnest brightness that he can't lose or dim.
And then, because he doesn't know what to do with that, or what to say next, to her, Matthias stands abruptly and tugs at his cloak, pulling it into place around him.
"I'm going to go piss," he announces, unnecessarily, "so--see you. I'll be back."
no subject
Kitty pulls an involuntary face, because that was very sudden, and the word piss is very disgusting.
"All right. Erm - Sure."
What's she supposed to say? Good luck? She shakes her head, and tucks her hands in against her side, and shakes her head.
no subject
Then he ducks off into the darkness and walks a few paces off, pulling his hood up so it will protect him from the rain, which is coming down quite steadily, if not all that hard. The damp roughspun of his cloak pulls heavy on his coatrack shoulders. The firelight is behind him, a little bright smudge in the darkness. It will be easy to find the way back, so Matthias allows himself to walk off a fair distance before he sits down beneath a tree, sink his arse into wet undergrowth and leaves. He puts his hands over his face, fingers pressed into his eyes, palms down by his mouth. Breathing in the gap between his hands, sucking in great lungfuls of air that both smells and tastes of wet, and rotten wood.
Just a minute of that. Then he pulls himself to his feet and turns back, following the way back to the firelight and Kitty, taking great care to make a load of noise so she knows he's coming. He sits down beside her again, shaking out his cloak.
"So what's your place like, where you're from? Your country, like." World. "Beside the bit about mages. Have you got, I dunno. Clocks? Cakes? Eyeglasses?"
no subject
"Of course we've got all that. London's got everything," Kitty says with the singular confidence of someone who had only been in one place all her life. "More than that, even. We've got - stuff they haven't thought of, here in Thedas. Like carriages that don't need horses to drive them, and airplanes - that's flying machines bigger than dragons that you can ride inside of. Telephones, they're like sending crystals except that they're cheap, everyone's got one. Typewriters - that's like a personal printing press, sort of, so you can write up anything - and pens with replaceable cartridges, we don't need inkwells or anything, and lifts so we don't need to climb up all those bloody stairs, we can just ride up. And toilets. And running water, in lots of houses, at least. We've got it in ours. Hot running water. And electricity, and radiators, and..."
And, and, and. She's been talking far too long, she realizes. And so she cuts herself off, and flushes very faintly, and says, "Lots of stuff. Sorry. Did you fall down? You've got some leaves stuck on your backside."
no subject
A little flush comes into his ears, blessedly hidden by his hood. Matthias rocks himself forward into a crouch, so he can brush hastily at the leaves. Damn. But there's a lot to go over, in the long list that she's said. Running water--like a brook? Hot running water--that'd be a hot springs, surely. Electricity, that's a word he sort of knows--lighting, or the static that comes of rubbing your hands together when you've got wool mittens on, or even chewing mint in the dark and letting the sparks pop out of your mouth, a sort of lame game that Matthias has made much of--raddyators--
"Wouldn't catch me in a bloody flying machine," he says, as he sinks to sit back down again. "What's driving the carriage if there's no horses?"
no subject
A fact which quells her enthusiasm. It's things she misses, all of that - being warm, really warm, even in the depths of winter, and not having to rely on the limited heat a fire puts off - but it's all made by unethical hands, isn't it? Better to be without it than to be given it at the cost of her own freedom and the freedom of others. Better to be here than there.
no subject
"Magic, driving carriages? I thought mages were tops, where you're from. So why're they going about wasting their magic on driving carriages when there's horses about that could just do it for them." Hang on. "There are horses, right?"
no subject
Not relevant information for Matthias; he's not a new recruit she's teaching the ways of the world. So: "It's not like a magician's got to be sitting in there constantly making it go. They have magicians - lower-level magicians, obviously, not the sort who'll get to be Prime Minister and all that - They have them working in factories, sitting in a nice cushy office, and soon as commoners have finished losing fingers or hands to the brutal machines that build the cars, the magicians wave their hands to make them go. And everyone says, Oh, yes, so-and-so built this car. And that name isn't a commoner's."
no subject
Second to the cause of the mages is the cause of poor people, who are constantly being trodden on and ignored. And Matthias would know, as he is those people. "So there's levels to it? I thought it was, you know. All mages being shit. Magicians," he corrects, "sorry. But it's a stupid word. Not that I s'ppose you care about it sounding stupid. And the Night Police, that's like--magicians who are guards, then?"
no subject
Then she looks up. That was maybe too much of a confession, but...As she'd decided earlier: Matthias is all right. And it's not like he doesn't know a thing or two about dodging the authorities, right? He's never discussed it with her directly, but it doesn't take a genius to know that he was part of the mage rebellion.
"But yeah - I mean, it's like Tevinter, right? There are some that are on top, and some below them scrabbling for an advantage. Doesn't make them good. Just different."
no subject
"That's true. Yeah. About it being like Tevinter, I mean. Just seems different, but I reckon that's 'cause I don't know much about it. I don't know much about Tevinter, really," which he cops to with a bit of a grimace. "They're sort of mental. S' like Nevarra. Death and weirdies there. And Tevinter is just weirdies with slaves."
(no subject)