OPEN: this will be a better year

[faderifting]

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!

Comments

[girlinthebox]

"My brother."

She goes quiet for a moment, the sound of the party below and the whistling of the wind the only noise, and muted from this high up. "When they took me, he came. He made them stop hurting me. Then we started running, until we came here."

[onlyhymns]

Cade's mind immediately flashed with Apostate!! but he shook his head with a wince. He already knew this about River. He already knew Skyhold was lousy with them. This wasn't anything new or alarming, even if he couldn't turn off the Templar instincts.

"That was good of him," he said instead.

[girlinthebox]

River stares at him quizzically a moment, arms still folded around her tiny frame. No, that wasn't right. It was, but it didn't fit the way he thought it did. "I wasn't running from the Circle," she added. "I know what they are, but I never went there. They'd have made it too quiet, and Simon would have been sad."

[onlyhymns]

Cade hadn't expected that. His brow knit uncertainly as he looked down at her. "...then what were you running from?" he asked tentatively. He wasn't foolish enough to be unaware of the way Templars were viewed by mages, especially having been quite aggressively part of the problem himself when he'd been in Kirkwall. It had never set right with him, but being who he was, he had felt powerless to change a thing, and had disregarded his own misgivings as weakness. Now, people at Skyhold were validating them, but he wasn't ready for that yet. For all these years, he hadn't wanted to be right, because that would have meant the things he did within the Order were unquestionably atrocious.

[girlinthebox]

"North."

Her eyes feel shut, her grip on her arms tightening. "Warm, foggy and old stone streets. Dragons at every turn, still and staring. The eyes of the old empire whittled down to its bones. A nest of vipers. No one left unscathed."

After a moment her eyes opened again, realization creeping in across her face. "...no one else left. They didn't come for them. Just Simon."

[onlyhymns]

"...Tevinter?" he guessed, with a wince. He knew things about Tevinter, and that people from there were generally Enemies. but he had no concept of life there. At her conclusion, he asked, "..why?"

[girlinthebox]

"Couldn't find them. Couldn't fight. Didn't know. Didn't care. Didn't want to know."

A number of reason. Any number of them. Maybe more than one. People were complicated in that way. River shakes her head again.

"Doesn't matter now."

[onlyhymns]

"...fair enough."

Cade looked at River for a moment longer, then out at the party again. In a way, it was comfortable to watch the festivities, a reminder that the world wasn't all war and violence all the time, even if he wasn't down there celebrating with the rest. They were able to turn off their fear of the future, at least for a little while.