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!

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It's the movement that gets Lux rolling over again, more of the red showing in his coat in this light than the black and it doesn't take long for him to squirm out of Araceli's lap to sniff at the new stranger. No danger of his tail being stepped on if all parties are seated and she rolls her eyes at him even though her smile is fond.

"If you have anything in your pockets you might wish to keep a watch on it, he has no shame," she cautions but at least she knows he's been friendly with everyone they've met here thus far. "Oh no, I couldn't possibly borrow your cloak," she says as she runs her fingers over the fabric, the weave not like one she's felt before. "We're by a fire and I have my flask, one day I shall have to adjust to it, no? Certainly if I make good on a promise I have perhaps foolishly made to a friend here."

He stares wide-eyed at the fox, hardly daring to breathe for fear of spooking it, but a tiny smile creases his face as it sniffs at his feet.

"Adjusting's all well and good, but this cloak'll keep you comfortable and warm in the meantime, until you get used to the cold proper," he says reasonably. "But what's this promise, if you don't mind me asking?"

Being the sort to live around pirates, feet are soon forgotten because for all these are interesting, hands and faces are better, and with a wag of his brush of a tail he butts his face into the nearest hand, huffing with impatience.

"You are very kind sir." With careful hands she wraps it about herself, scooting closer so as to share at least some of the warmth, shifting the fox a touch before she glances away at the fire. "My dear friend Korrin was in Emprise du Lion where she had to see some very awful things, things I don't think I could wish on anyone. What she saw sounded horrific and so I made a vow to go with her whenever the Inquisition returns there so she need not be alone," at last she looks away from the fire, her smile small and a little shy.

Sam smiles, genuinely charmed as the fox thrusts its face into his hand, and he carefully shifts his fingers to scratch behind his ear.

"You're friends with Korrin?" His eyes widen, and he looks up, surprised and pleased. But the pleasure doesn't last long, and his expression becomes worried as Araceli describes what the qunari had seen. "How horrible! But surely you needn't go too, just to keep her company? Why must the Inquisition go back there at all, if it's such an awful place?" It doesn't make any sense to him, returning to darkness and danger once one had gotten safely out of it.

"If he annoys you, let me know, you would think he gets no attention the way he behaves around others." A blatant lie when he sleeps curled next to her and she's spoiled him since she first got him but there you go.

"She was the very first person I met, she saved my life." Thought it's more than just a debt of gratitude, she was more frightened than she had ever been before, and there Korrin had been, between her and harm. "Keeping her company isn't exactly my purpose, I would go more as a person to lean on. Someone she can turn to who will support her should she need it away from any others. There are people suffering there. They're hurting, they're scared, no one else is even out there except us, we cannot sit idly by while that happens. These are normal people, like me, perhaps like you I cannot say, all too often they are forgotten as it is."

"Oh no, no - not at all," Sam hastens to assure her, smiling kindly at the fox. It's nice to have an animal around again.

He turns thoughtful as Araceli speaks. He still doesn't like the idea of anyone going back there when it's so dangerous, but if there are people in need of help...

"Well...I suppose it's better than letting her go off alone, if you are able to help," he says at last, reluctantly. "Is it really so bad though? Do you think...do you think the Inquisition will be able to help at all?"

"Have you met any of the native hounds yet?" She asks, out of interest because she certainly got a hell of a fright the first time she ran into one. "They're enormous, I never knew a dog could ever get so big."

"People are being kept in cages, forced to work," she admits very quietly, reaching out a hand to stroke Lux's back. "I want to think that the Inquisition to put a stop to that. I want to think that even if I have no choice in being here then I'm with people who want to make things better. Maybe that's childish or too simple but it's better to hope, yes? We rescued people in the Fallow Mire and helped the newest rifters there too, I want to take it as a sign."

Sam shakes his head, his eyes widening a bit. Fond of animals though he is, he's not at all sure he'd like to meet a dog quite that big.

But all thoughts of dogs are driven out of his mind almost immediately. He actually gasps, putting a hand to his mouth.

"That's...that's horrible," he finally manages to say. "In cages! Surely..." He hesitates, his brow furrowing as he thinks hard. "Surely with all these Men and Elves and Dwarves, all these wizards and warriors - surely we can set them free? But who would do such a thing to begin with?"

"They call them Red Templars. Different to the sort they have here," she hastens to add, given recent tensions and not wishing to throw oil on the fire. "I think they left the rest, or the ones we have here left before the red ones became red? The mage politics are easier to understand but this red lyrium is said to be a terrible thing. They're forcing people to mine it, in the cold, without proper clothes, enough food.

I didn't know cold like this until I came here, I live close to the sea and only when the winter storms rage does it ever become cold. But I've known hungry people, the way they walk, and where hunger walks then sickness often holds its hand." Her sigh is explosive, forcing out all the air so she can take a deep breath to steady herself without losing her temper one way or the other at a situation they seem so powerless to change quickly. "The fear is that we stop them in one place and they move on. The Inquisition cannot stretch endlessly, it must pick or choose the battles it fights."

Sam frowns deeply, his heart sinking as she explains. He doesn't quite understand all that she's saying, but then, he doesn't need to in order to understand how bad things are.

"I suppose that's a fair point," he says heavily. "No one can save everyone all at once. But I can't think of any battle that would be more worth fighting, if not the one to save people from starvation and - and slavery!"

Leaning over, she sets a hand on his arm and squeezes, her smile still sad, how could it not be given the discussion, but it's warm and determined.

"You have a good heart. But let us set this aside if we will, at least until the day comes to plan the return mission. I have not asked where you come from and how you came to be a part of the Inquisition."

The hobbit nods, though he still looks a bit worried and glum. He does his best to put the dark thoughts aside, though, and smiles tentatively at Araceli as she puts her hand on his arm.

"It's not a very heroic sort of story, I'm afraid," he says. "I sort of became a part of things by accident, if you understand me, after I fell through and landed in that bog away down south: and as for where I'm from, well, I suppose you wouldn't know it any more than anyone else here, even if I were to name it." The despondency hasn't left him completely, it seems, and he sighs heavily.

Actions speak louder than words and she raises her left hand, a green mark bright in the dark stretched across her palm.

“We match then, most people here could mistake me for a native if I didn’t have that.” It’s the subject of several bets that she has her own stake in and plans on collecting, run through another taking a cut, the only sort of way to deal with these things. “I must have missed you in the Mire but then it was rather the busy time.” First trip away, missing scouts, fighting the biggest not-horned men she’d ever seen as more people fell out of the sky? Busy just about covers that.

“I would love to hear of your home though, I speak of mine often to those I meet so I never forget it and so maybe they will come to love it just as dearly as I do. There is always a new horizon to be explored after all.” She means it, each and every word, not just because she’s a stranger in a strange land like him, or a pirate’s daughter but because she doesn’t want him to be disheartened when speaking of home can lift her own spirits.

"Oh!" Sam's eyes open wide. He's met a few others who, like him, had traveled here through the rifts, but not too many. It's still exciting to meet someone else like himself, and he finds that he's curious about her own home as well, even if it's somewhere he'll never see. "I never thought of it that way. I've told lots of people here about the Shire, but I...I'm not sure I got it quite right, if you follow me. Not well enough that any of then came to care about it, anyhow. Perhaps you could tell me of your home, and I can tell you of mine, and we can remember them both together."

"Alas, some things can only be experienced by being there. The sights can be hard enough but how do you truly tell people of the smell, the feel, the sounds? I am always happy to speak of home and to trade in turn."

The sigh that follows is quiet and fond, the way it should be when talking about home though that isn't even something many of the natives seem capable of. "My home is a series of islands, all of them stretched and dotted around close enough that we can call it a nation. We are sailors born, we love the sea more than all things in this world, it and the moon. We live our lives with passion - our markets bustle from what our ships return with though they're on barges or smaller boats; what few streets we have? They're too narrow to allow for a stall to stand anywhere except the docks proper."

And the docks are for fish and off-loading, not for fine fabrics because no one wants to smell like squid and cod.

Sam listens raptly, but he can't stop himself from shivering at her description. Islands surrounded by water? Nothing could sound less homelike to him.

"Well, it's clear you love it anyhow, and I hope you might find your way back someday. But I'm afraid I could never love it like you do, no matter how many lovely stories you might share. Boats and the sea! Why I'd be scared and sick all the time, and no mistake. That is until I fell in the water; and then I guess I wouldn't be nothing at all."

"You do not swim?" What would her father say, to hear such a thing? We swim before we ever walk, Araceli, it's how we know that we came from the water first, something like that, twirling his greying moustache with a grin to show off the gold tooth most likely. "Tell me where you come from, then, I can only imagine the sea and so many masts at the docks, almost another city entirely when the ships return home."

He shakes his head firmly. "No, no," he says hurriedly. "And I'm no great lover of boats neither! But as for me, well. I come from the Shire - the land of the hobbits. There's no sea but there is a great river of sorts - leastways I thought it great, until I came to the real great river. But none of us sail or row upon it, excepting the Brandybucks down in Buckland. As for the rest of us, we keep our feet dry: toes firmly on the dirt, and in it, like as not."

"So a hobbit is what you are then? I did wonder but I thought as I come from a place of only humans, asking such a question is very odd." Besides, she sort of thought she had it covered: tall with horns? Various Qun-related folks. Pointy ears, with or without Vallaslin? Elves. Short and stocky? Dwarf. Everyone else? Human. But these Brandybucks must be daring then, to sail the river as they do but she'll leave aside her own loves for the moment. "What is it like there? Are there thick forests, great fields? I only know land that is built upon or shores and beaches."

"You won't know the Shire at all, then," he says, leaning forward, a little more enthusiastic now. "There's no shores nor beaches in the Shire, save the riverbanks. But we've got forests and fields aplenty: green, green far as the eye can see. You haven't eaten until you've eaten a hobbit-meal, or six of them. Rashers of bacon, cold mugs of beer, the freshest of greens, straight from the garden to the plate. All that and more!"

There's a moment where she closes her eyes to try to imagine it a little better but it's too different for her to really manage. "The most green I see are kelp forests, and then only if I go for a swim. But six meals! If we have three a day then we count ourselves very lucky but six, how does one find the time? Oh Lux if I ate six meals a day I could roll you around the place like a very furry sort of barrel. To have such fresh vegetables, we must send for ours by sea, the soil is too salty for many things."

Sam smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling in happiness. He hasn't talked of home - really talked of home - in a long while, and to his pleasant surprise, he's actually enjoying thinking of the people and places he hasn't seen in so long. Perhaps it's the fact that Araceli misses her home, too, and yet doesn't seem to regret being here. Perhaps it's her obvious and genuine interest in the Shire, or the fox now curled up contentedly between their feet.

"There are some hobbits that nearly have to be rolled!" he admits, lighthearted. "But we do well enough; and what's the use of living in the midst of farms and fields and letting all of their riches go to waste? But I'm sure your own home has riches aplenty of its own. What - what does it look like, the sea?"

Since arriving in Thedas, she’s had the good fortune to meet more than a few who’ve asked about what sort of world a rifter comes from, but never with anyone in the same boat, so to speak. She could happily have stayed in Castileos all of her days seeking out people from other lands to ask them tales but she’s always been restless, always wanting to know what the world is like. This is what being rich is to her, not the amount of coin she has in her purse.

“The only farms I can honestly say we have are for salt. Ebeos and Estene are where we get most everything else that has to be grown. Plants that like salt are only fit for goats.” Thedas is likely going to be the most green place she’ll have seen with her own two eyes and it’s hard to imagine what Sam describes to her in honesty. Well maybe the rolling bit, some merchants end up pretty portly and so do the nobles. “Sometimes the sea is a perfect mirror of the sky when it’s calm, especially at night when you can’t tell where one meets the other in the dark, the moon and stars above and below. When the storms rage the waves can come up over houses, like angry white horses charging, grey as the clouds but most places it’s so blue it almost hurts to look at it, if you’re out you can look down and watch the little fish darting about the reefs, silvers and bright colours, or the kelp forests. Sometimes it’s so blue that you don’t see a whale until it breaches right alongside the ship.”

It sounds beautiful and terrifying all at once. Sam listens raptly, eyes going wide at the description of the blueness of the water and the sea mirroring the sky, then shrinking away at the thought of the storms.

"I never saw no fish that weren't slimy and grey," he admits. "I'd dearly love to see the ones you speak of, if only I didn't have to get near the water to do so! But what's a whale?"

"If we go somewhere warm, you can see them from the shallows without having to go too far - I would never let anyone drown." That's about the most solemn sort of vow she can ever give, because the sea is beautiful yes, and the sea gives life but the sea can be dangerous too, sweeping people away in an instant. Whales though, of all the things she never thought she would have to try to explain it would be a whale. "Most of them are huge, bigger than our ships. They cannot survive on land but unlike fish they have no gills so they come to the surface to breathe, having only one young at a time that they raise like other animals. Were it less cold I could show you my tattoo, I have one of one of the larger whales that feed off our coasts commonly. The voyages a whale goes on, even ships must stop to resupply and catch up to them."

OPEN: this will be a better year

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