faderift | so look alive, it's much cheaper

There are two chapels in the Gallows. Simple things, practical.

Isaac couldn't say who maintains them (can't think it's Sara), but someone must. Dust mingles light, the candles not yet run to puddles.

Has he been here before? It doesn't matter: Anonymous in the way of all Circle chapels. It doesn't look a thing like the others, only that there's always been one. The eye learns to skate.

His hand lowers to one wickering spindle of wax, smothers the little flame. It's a moment before he realizes,

"Ah," Candles don't light themselves. Obviously. "Did you —"

Edited 2020-07-11 08:11 (UTC)

There are so many things to pray for: the Maker's return, the end of Corypheus' reign of terror in the north, the removal of the shard caught in her hand, her parents' health and sanity (please turn Mother's heart such that she stops demanding my return home). Even if the Maker in His absence answers no prayer, He should know the faithful haven't faltered.

And, of course, on the off chance that He might listen and respond, it's worthwhile to ask.

Footsteps startle her--she's only one of many who use the chapel, no doubt, but it's so frequently empty--but her prayers are essentially finished anyway. Standing, she turns to find a rather distinguished-looking older gentleman. "I'm afraid you've caught me by surprise, Serah. I hadn't expected company."

The eye learns to skate: Even by dim light, Betrys cuts an odd figure. Pious in a gown, and a gleam in her palm; the first somehow the strangest.

"Then I can only beg apology," The bow of his shoulders as he steps aside is slight enough to take for accident. "For in truth, I'm grateful not to see the place abandoned."

The doorway's clear. An exit, if she wants it. He settles upon the edge of a pew, head canted for conversation, should she not.

"Consider yourself forgiven, Serah," she says, all pleasance as she sits back down and smoothes her rosy pink skirts. There's nothing, after all, to apologize for in wishing to be nearer the Maker. "In truth, this is the first time I've met anyone else here."

She's tempted to say something about just how inattentive Riftwatch seems to be, as regards the Chantry, but it's a temptation easily avoided. Difficult to know, truly, what brings this gentleman here. Instead, perhaps an inevitable question when she still feels so new: "Have you been part of Riftwatch long?"

"Four years," He pauses, rubs a hand on chin. "Five?"

Impossible. That ought to be impossible. A gesture, mouth crinkling wry:

"Of course, it wasn't Riftwatch then."

"No, I suppose it wasn't." She's smoothing over her surprise as best she can, but some still escapes in her raised brows. (Having been in Kirkwall just long enough to feel terribly small, from a terribly small place comparatively, she'd like to do what she can to keep herself from seeming too much the naïf.) "It speaks to your bravery, that you've served so long."

An assumption, but one she thinks (hopes?) complimentary enough to hazard. And given some of the things she's heard about Riftwatch's adventures, it seems more than likely true.

"I fully recant," Leaned against a rampart, out of breath. "The Chantry has the right of it: We're meant to stay indoors, safe and unmuscled. Willowy as — as a —"

As something that doesn't do any more pushups today. He may be stalling for more than comedic effect.

"— As a willow."

Edited 2020-07-11 08:18 (UTC)

Joselyn, at this point flat on her stomach with her hands next to her head as if she might at any moment continue attempting to do push ups, rolls onto her back and considers the sky above her.

“No,” she decides. “How are we supposed to convince any other mage that Tevinter isn't their best option when Dorian Pavus looks like that and we have to have a break going up stairs. Rowntree's going to manifest out of the fade directly and make you do fifty more.”

She hasn't even spoken to him, he just looks like he would.

"Now there's an argument for templars. Protect us from the wickedness of vanity."

And Rowntree, whose particular demon has always seemed more... melty.

"I've always thought Pavus some clever bit of propaganda." You know, the drawings of him. "Oh, come North, we promise they don't all look like greasy little birds."

Edited 2020-07-12 00:52 (UTC)

“Mmm, no, I've seen him.” A pleasant memory, if the expression when she says so is anything to go by. “He's beautiful and he has a tit out all winter and honestly, if you looked like that, you would, too.”

"Must be cold as a witch's tit. Do you imagine that's where the phrase originated? It wouldn't surprise me terribly if it were Tevene —"

Isaac keeps talking. He does it for a while, and it's remarkable really how little of value is said. But eventually he pauses long enough to ask:

"Why was it you were doing this, again?"

Tone (expression) momentarily broken from its patter. Now that we're not fucking about, it seems to say; at least, now that he's not.

Somewhere in all that, she manages to interject, it's a frivolous use of a fire glyph but it looked effective and then, but if you light your chest hair on fire I had nothing to do with it.

He gets to his question, and Joselyn eases onto her elbows, considering it. Him. The universe at large. The Inquisition, and Riftwatch, and push ups.

“Which this was that? Because I thought the push-ups were relatively self-explanatory.”

"I don't know," Propped on his side, shuffling in a pocket for smokes. A lone seagull pecks the ramparts nearby, the only eavesdropper; they've still an hour at least until shift change bustles in. "Aren't you a bit young for a mid-life crisis?"

She doesn't look a day over twenty, etcetera. His eyes roll pre-emptively.

"No, I suppose — the Inquisition," Riftwatch comes answered, in searing green ink. "After the early days, you could have done anything."

Riftwatch is even more self-explanatory than push-ups, but—

“No, I couldn't.”

Yes, she could. Joselyn Smythe has worn the identity of mage for almost as long as she's been alive, now, somewhere mumble-north of twenty, and it would never have been easier to slough it off than in the aftermath. She could have put down a staff that she's never been truly able to use and changed her clothes and disappeared—

the phylactery that the Chantry believes is hers contains the same blood as the one labeled Miriam. More than anyone else who grew up in a Circle, Joselyn was free the second she stepped out of it.

“My sister is with the Inquisition,” she says, after a moment. “She's currently still on mission for them; she's supposed to join me here when she's been released from her duties, they.”

They assured her. Miriam assured her.

(Every day that Miriam isn't here, Joselyn worries that there will be another duty; that the Inquisition will not release her; that she is lying to herself that it's the Inquisition making the choice.)

“We had apprentices with us, during the war—there wasn't anywhere safe for them to go except to the Inquisition. And there's not a lot of safe ways for mages to leave the Inquisition. They know us now. These things have a way of drawing you back in.” They may well have two goddamn phylacteries for Miriam, and she isn't nearly as devout as she pretends to be but she prays daily that no one takes hers out to make sure she's at Riftwatch.

"They do,"

Blanket agreement. The Inquisition, the Chantry; these things have a way — and it wasn't so different then as now. There was a window with fewer eyes upon them (us), but there have always been windows. There's always been a cost to the view.

"What is she like?" It's she that answer truly stuttered on. "Your sister?"

Collateral in blood.

“Braver,” she says, wry. “She's the battle-mage—when people can tell us apart, that's usually how.”

Because otherwise they're identical, yes. (It always would have been how.)

“This is the longest we've ever been apart,” she notes, after a moment. “A few months, when we were children; her magic manifested before mine.” Joselyn has told this lie so many times it's effortless now. It almost feels true.

The pause as he props cigarette in teeth might be only that.

Lucky. Of course she'll have heard that before: Lucky it was both of them, lucky to not be separated still.

"Did you want it, back then?"

The magic — he supposes, the sister.

Was there a time when Isaac ever wished it? Some apprentices got letters, and the excitement of it; something else. How he'd wanted one, the way they made it look, and never a thought for the names inside. It wasn't as if the Kellars could read.

It would be difficult to express in so many words just how much,

“I don't remember the rest of our family,” is what she says, eventually. “Not very well, you know. Anecdotes. Moments. The house where we lived, but not the street it was on. I only really thought of being with my sister.”

For a long time after, too, for the Smythes to slip so. She thinks of them now, sometimes, but mostly in how peculiar it is how easy it was to let go—a pang of something that she doesn't quite identify as guilt. That doesn't quite feel like guilt, just an oddness. Like a gap in her teeth where she presses her tongue sometimes to feel its shape.

It would be unkind to ask whether the sister thought of her.

"I suppose," He ventures, and it's uncertain territory. Traipsed down some blind turn — "If you think of something enough, you begin to think less of it."

"Only, no. I don't mean it like that. Enough trees make a forest," Condense: A filtered pattern. "But we only recognize a few."

"Landmarks."

There's a tapping at the door. On the other side of it is a man large enough to take up the whole doorway, with a hangdog look and a duffel bag. He at least has the decency to smile sheepishly and offer his hand, especially considering what he's about to say:

"Barrow. Erm... your new roomie. Medic thought it'd be better if I got out of the group quarters."

Mouth slung open, scratching at the faded belly of a shirt that can't have been washed this season, Lazar doesn't exactly radiate nurture.

"The hell happened to you?"

Someone cleverer — only clever's not really it, someone who cared a little more on keeping their peace might ask: I look a fuckin' nurse now?

Guess he does. Enough, at least, to clear the the doorway; to take Barrow's bag before there he can object.

As rooms go, it's standard Gallows fare. Two beds, one occupied. Someone clever with their hands put real work into that blanket, someone cleverer than that put a lock on his trunk. Those books by the desk have been stacked to hide their spines against the wall; quill and ink lined up with a fussy precision.

Withdrawing his unshaken hand without comment, Barrow is a little surprised to have his bag simply taken like that, but isn't about to pass up a little help right when he needs it.

"Venatori," he says dismissively, shuffling inside and closing the door behind him, "...sorry, didn't catch your name."
He glances over the rest of the room.

"Big reader?"

so look alive, it's much cheaper | closed

betrys;

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joselyn;

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firin my lazars (I'm old fuck off)

pew pew grandma

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