faderift | OPEN: this will be a better year

OPEN: this will be a better year

WHO: Everyone
WHAT: First Day
WHEN: Wintermarch 1 (forward-dated)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Scouts from both the Western Approach and Emprise du Lion are welcome (but not required) to have returned to Skyhold in time for this event.

There have been better First Day feasts, and less crowded ones, and cheerier ones. It isn't a good year for many to look back on, and this one isn't starting any better. Reports from both Eastern and Western Orlais are grim. Many in the Inquisition can't afford to take more than a few hours away from their work, if that.

But for those who can, the ambassador does her best. At lunchtime some tables, hot food, and finery are reserved for visiting nobility and wealthy pilgrims--cause for grumbling in some quarters, perhaps, but they're the people filling the Inquisition's coffers, and allowances must be made--but there's plenty of stew, bread, and ale for everyone, even with the soldiers and refugees who stay outside the fortress invited inside for the holiday. The recently repaired garden and its carefully tended plants aren't off limits, but anyone noisy and holding a drink will be stopped at the door; the battlements, with their potential for deadly falls, are blocked by Inquisition guards. But the courtyards brim with people, most of them happy despite the possibility that the world might end before another First Day arrives.

If the courtyards are too full of tipsy visitors for comfort, there's also the valley beyond the fortress, expansive, barren, and covered in snow. By the river the soldiers help the refugees make a bonfire larger than would ever be allowed inside Skyhold's walls, and some lend their shields to use as sleds down the embankments. A group of scouts start the most intense game of hide and seek Thedas has ever seen, with snowballs to the face for whoever is found first. In the camp, a refugee girl with her hand wrapped in a green scarf chases other children around the tents, shouting raaar, I'm from the rifts!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"That's what I said, magical rejujuvination."

You know what would be great? Modern plumbing. Then anyone could draw up a hot bath no problem. (Also, people would wash more often.) He could go for one right now, probably. Instead, naturally, he just sips his wine and lets it sit for a moment, feeling that warmth.

"Spoken like someone who hasn't taken a turn sledding. And then it won't even matter if you end up face-first in a snow bank, cuz you can warm yourself up."

"LeBlancs don't fall face first into snowbanks. Nor do we sled. We glide." Across ice and snow and marbled tile- or so her mother taught her best she could before she was taken to the spire. She sips her own wine, or rather she drains the mug and stands, brushing off her skirts.

"I assume that was meant as some manner of invitation or challenge, yes? Do you mean to follow through, ser, or are you merely running your mouth as you so love to do, ser."

"Uh, I mean, I guess we can always race to the bottom of the hill, but that's not so much skill as it is luck and logistics. I mean. You're lighter than I am, for one." He waves a hand around. "I'll run my mouth all day long if I want, so are you gonna borrow a shield and sled or are you just too proper for that sort of thing, ma'am?"

If she's gonna call him sir well then he's gonna...not tell her to stop but she'll get a ma'am back that's for sure.

"We do not need shields." And it is the wine that has her at ease enough, comfortable enough to gesture off to one side, a perfectly formed disk blooming into being on the ice. Probably more than enough for him and his weight. For herself she forms something slimmer, longer. A shaped ellipse that she will handle standing.

"Shall we?"

"...Did you seriously just magic up a couple of sleds?" He'll have to finish off his wine and will probably need more later to handle this. But hell yeah he's up for it. He grabs the one for him, smirking. "Go on the count of three?"

"Of course, you may count." She rests a foot against the base of her board, the other held with chilled fingertips while she pins the bulk of her skirts off to one side so they would not tangle about her legs for the glide down.

He keeps a few steps back, round sled in front of him, and eases into a crouch. "One. Two. Three!" Church takes a few long strides and launches himself down over the crest of the hill, landing on his chest on the sled with a bit of a jolt but not necessarily pain. Ha, now he's got aerodynamics on his side!

Adelaide takes her approach much the same, a few long steps, a jump, tilting the thin board of ice down and trusting her balance to hold her- it isn't something they were able to do often outside the spire; but when the occasion came? She took it with both hands in her youth. Between the transparency of the ice and the thickness of the snow- it truly did appear as though she was gliding down the hill.

Which, yeah, looks pretty awesome, he has to admit. But zooming super fast on ice over snow is also pretty awesome. She better not be using any magic to boost herself along, cuz, see, that would be cheating, while on a magical ice disk.

Boost? Her? Never. Reaching the bottom isn't her goal so much as not falling face first into a drift. It's been too long since she's last had the opportunity or desire to do this- carving a path down the hill with subtle shifting of her stance on the board, and it is taking all her focus not to topple over.

Well, he'd rather not go fast-first into a drift, either, but he's trying to race to the bottom first. His form of control is just leaning from side to side and hoping he doesn't tip over and wipe out. Or hit a tree. "Hang ten!" he calls to her. Knowing full well she doesn't know what he's talking about. "Cowabunga, dude! Don't let a gnarly wave wipe you out!" Maybe he's trying to distract her. Maybe.

None of that makes any sense, she spares him half a thought before crouching slightly, hair billowing behind her as she cuts forward across his path- it's not cheating if she's not using magic to make his ride a little bumpy, is it? No? She thought not.

"Wh-" He can't finish the exclamation before he bounces up, not high enough to throw him but enough to jostle him on his short flight and impact. He spins, unintentional, and for a moment ends up going backwards before trying to spin himself back around and letting physics do its thing. "Party foul! Unfair!"

"What was that? Again?" She's giggling, cutting back across his path in a wave as they near the end of the hill. It's silly. It's childish. It's fun she hasn't had in so long she's almost forgotten the feeling.

And again it's a hop and an awkward spin, but he keeps on spinning this time, a little yell of surprise, no control, skids down past the bottom of the hill, keeps on going, hits an uneven bump, flips, and lands spread-eagle in the snow.

And lays there for a moment before popping his head up and laughing like he's running out of air. Rolls onto his back and holds his splitting sides. "You jackass," he says breathlessly.

She manages to glide to a stop without rolling off the board, dropping into a graceful bow for the handful of people applauding their shared performance. "I have no idea what you are talking about. Clearly you have no idea how to sled."

None whatsoever.

"You're such a fucking cheater, and your ice sleds are dumb." He sits up, starting to brush himself off. Look at all that work you did heating Church up only to see him sprawled in the snow again. "To be fair, I think here's the first time I've ever really sled, so, there!"

"You only say that because you failed to land gracefully." She steps off her board and walks offer to offer him a hand up, eyes bright with mirth. "You did not do too terribly then, for a beginner. I am willing to bet none of your bones are broken."

"I still managed to get to the bottom before you," he says with a lopsided grin, taking her hand and wiping snow off his face with the other. "So, technically, I still won. Just not gracefully. Grace only nets brownie points. And my bones are fine. Pretty sure they're fine. I mostly feel numb to everything, but I'm pretty sure everything's working."

"Seeing as you botched the landing- I do not know if it counts." Her hands glow with blue light and warmth- she rests them against his shoulders to let the heat roil through him. Nothing broken. Nothing bruised. Not too terrible a job for someone that had aboslutely no idea whatsoever what he was doing.

Welcome to his life, to be honest. But better play it off as a not so normal occurrence. "It totally counts, and you were cheating anyway. How did you learn to snowboard like that? Maybe we should make a ramp and see if you can do any tricks in the air." He might be leaning toward her a little. Just a little. She's warm and has warm hands and she's cool and he doesn't know a lot of cool women and she's warm.

"Snow what? I suppose that is a fine name for it." Snow-board. Well one made a board of ice and worked with that, more or less,, it could be done with a metal or wooden one like the shields had been for sleds. "Why would I want to build a ramp? That is terribly dangerous."

Foolishness meant for others- rather than her and he and the leaning he keeps doing. "I think you may have hit your head on something."

"We should get you to the beach and invent surfboards next." No reason she couldn't be good at that, too. "And making a ramp lets you get some air! Not enough that you get hurt if you know how to land. It's exciting. Learn to do some tricks and spins and stuff to impress people. It's a thing." Slowly inventing olympic winter sports was not what he was after, but hey!

"Blow was softened by snow. I'm fine. My head is just fine. Always is."

"We are a fair ways from the coast, Church." She steadies him as best she can, trying to wrap her mind around ramps and air tricks and how this can at all be like working on sand dunes. Perhaps with the right angle and curve of the ice but it would not glide near so neatly. "I do not need people impressed with me anymore than they already are. Such things are for fools that do not know their own merit."

"So, when it warms up some, we should have a vacation to the nearest, warmest beach. Get you in a bikini, get you surfing the waves. For fun, not for impressing people. That's just a bonus on the side."

OPEN: this will be a better year

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