[OPEN] Interview With A Mage

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa and you!
WHAT: Talking to Magefriends about Magic and Abominations
WHEN: August; Post-Abomination, Pre-Modplot
WHERE: Around the Gallows
NOTES: none yet

i. colin

It's one of the days that sees Athessa helping out in the apothecary, which means busy hands but a mind free to wander. She's separating the buds from dried, woody stems to place each into jars for their individual uses when she speaks:

"I've been thinking a lot about what happened..."

ii. kostos

This isn't a conversation that is going to happen organically. After reading through some esoteric writings on magic in the library, she gives up for a time and stalks off to find Kostos.

"Oi," she calls to him, jogging to catch up with him. "Got a minute?"

iii. isaac

[ Some late night crystal call when Athessa's eyes get tired of reading ]

Isaac, can I pick your brain a bit?

iv. derrica

[ They've had their fair share of difficult conversations of late, and this one bodes no different. The kicker, of course, is that it's far more personal to Derrica than it is to Athessa, so when the latter seeks out the former, she comes bearing gifts. Little spiced cookies and coffee over ice - does Derrica drink coffee? ]

It's not spice cake, but the flavor is pretty close.

v. wildcard/bring out your mage

[ either hmu on disco or plurk and i'll make a starter for you or wildcard me, whichever! ]

Comments

[coquettish_trees]

"I—" There's a hitch of breath there. Still? It's been... almost exactly two years since Minrathous. "—do not, no.

"I think, perhaps, as such an occurrence represents what might be considered less than an iron will, such reports are little publicized. But if the Circles of the South and their Templars and their Harrowings were the only ways to prevent it, the freedom of the mages in the North would come at a cost they could not hide." Alexandrie sighs.

"For all that it is derided, Tevinter proves there are other ways for the human nations. Families need not be separated, lovers kept apart, mages hidden away in towers where it is easy to fear them because they are not known. There can be joy in magic." She remembers so well the sleepy thoughtless flicker of his fingers to douse the lights without even raising his arm from where it so casually lay across her. Always, there is still a little awe in it.

"But you know this." She speaks with absent softness as her fingers patiently smooth and weave through Athessa's hair. "You have loved a mage, seen her cast. Is magic beautiful, do you think? Or do they make it so; another way they grip your heart with wonder."

[sulahnan]

That isn't something she's ever thought about. Is magic beautiful? She went from knowing very little about magic while working and living among the Qunari in Kont-aar, to being surrounded by mages she's come to know as friends, brothers, lovers. She knows first-hand the fear of being controlled, knows the gut-wrenching tug on her veins from being puppeted by that maleficar, but she also knows the wonder that Lexie speaks of. She felt it the first time she saw one of Kostos' wisps, for starters, and—

"Back when Eshal had that fighting ring in Lowtown," she reminisces, a smile coloring her words. "Me n' Derrica were competing in the matches. She got a bruised jaw, I wrenched my arm, and when we were watching the others fight she put magic into a kiss to make my shoulder feel better," It had been such a smooth move, showing up Athessa's own kiss to Derrica's jaw. How could she ever hold up against that? "I think it is. I do think magic is beautiful. I don't understand why the Chantry wants us to fear mages so much; I don't understand it any more than why the Chantry forced elves into Alienages."

[coquettish_trees]

“Perhaps they fear mages less than they fear becoming as Tevinter is. I cannot say, of the elves.” Another lifted shoulder, invisible. “One thing or the other may be said, but the heart of it is always to keep power in the hands that hold it, gather more where they may.” The careful twist and slide of hands in hair continues, and Alexandrie slides slightly to the side once she has made it to the nape of Athessa’s neck to better continue the curve of it over her shoulder.

“Whatever the purpose... well. I do not doubt that there are those within its structure who believe truly, but I have as little doubt that the motivations of the Sunburst Throne are of man rather than Maker.”

It is in Orlais, after all.

“But how sweet and clever of her,” is the exclamation then, a pivot from the Chantry, “to make it a kiss!”

[sulahnan]

“Clever and sweet describes her pretty well,” Athessa chuckles. Clever and sweet. She tips her head to angle it to help Lexie, and also to try and see her handiwork.

“Why is it that the people who want power are always the ones who shouldn’t have it?”

[coquettish_trees]

A sighed hum, for that. After a long pause for thought, she returns a question rather than an answer.

“Can you remember a time in your life, when you wanted power?”

[sulahnan]

“Not that kind of power,” she says. “The power to fight back, sure. But not the power to control people.”

[coquettish_trees]

“It is the same,” she replies non-committally, “or the power itself is.” Alexandrie tucks a curl of wayward hair, teased by the breeze, back into her work. “Let us say you gain the power to fight back, and you do. You win. You stop the hurt you or those you care for are being caused. Are you satisfied, or do you look for other hurts to end; look for ways you might prevent such pains from even beginning?”

[sulahnan]

Athessa takes a breath to speak, but lets it go as a scoff at her own knee-jerk reaction. She sits with Lexie's question for a beat longer.

"I wanna say that it's pointless to imagine, since elves don't get that kind of power, but —" That's not productive, not the point, and contrary to her own insistence that accepting things to be permanently fucked, as Kostos said, is something she will not, even cannot do. "I just wish that power would be used by kinder hands."

[coquettish_trees]

"My question to you is specifically because I believe you to have kind hands. A desire to see justice done.

"But kindness and justice to one can be harm caused another," she continues, moving around to the front of Athessa as the curve turns to a straight braid that will lay on her chest. "Take Corypheus. We think him a cruel terror bent on destruction, he thinks himself a restorer of glory to his people, and there are many in Tevinter who agree. Should someone like him appear to champion the elves, to return you to glory... that great kindness to, love and true justice for, a scattered trampled people would require ripping apart the world that is. In this way, and in smaller ways, power often renders kinder hands unkind."

She continues more softly, her eyes on the near finished work. "I cannot claim my hands kinder, when I sought power for my safety and vengeance, but... it was justice of a sort for myself and others, a kindness done to any he might have hurt in the future when eventually I had enough influence to cause one of the men involved in my ruin and those of other women to be killed." She wraps a lock of hair at the end of the braid to hold it, retrieves a pin from her own hair to make it secure. "It broke the heart of his lover, turned her to vengeance, and nearly ruined his family, of which he was sole heir, that had done nothing to me save produce him."

[sulahnan]

Athessa looks down at her hands. These kind hands, bade by a desire to see justice done that would so willingly sever a man's ability to cause harm, but more than that inflict upon him even a fraction of the suffering he would cause to countless young women. Remove his hands so he cannot touch, drown him in wine and break his teeth on the bottle so he too might know the bitterness with which he infected her.

"Maybe they should've done a better job of it," she says. "If you make a poison and sell it as medicine, saying you didn't know the suffering it caused will only absolve you of so much."

Her fingers find the finished braid, trailing down it to get a sense of what it might look like by feel. The texture of the weaving, the ripple of her curls wrested into shape. She'll wear it like this as long as she's able.

"I wouldn't trust myself with that kind of power."

[coquettish_trees]

“And that is why you should be a finer choice to bear it than anyone who thinks themselves right to. You should doubt and scrutinize your use where they should not.”

Alexandrie stands and brushes her skirts back into place, moving off to select and pinch off a few sprays of bud and flower from a nearby ornamental bush.

“But because of that you also do not seek it, and they do, and that,” she continues, sitting again on the bench to thread and tuck the stems into where the braid begins, letting a few of her own ringlets fall loose to use their pins to hold it all in place, “is how it ends up in what hands it does. Ah, c’est belle.”

She reaches into the folds of her skirts to produce and offer a little hand mirror.

[sulahnan]

She has questions, about what Alexandrie would have her do, about seeking power, but what Athessa actually asks is:

"You always carry a mirror?" Which is a silly question. Of course someone like Lexie would carry a mirror.

But she hesitates to take it, a cord of complicated feelings about what she might see in her reflection tugging back on her wrist. When she does take it in hand to see Lexie's work, she's careful to angle it more to look at the braid itself and not her own face.

"Wild rose," she says on a soft little laugh. "Signifies pleasure and pain."

[coquettish_trees]

“Just so.” It is softly said, with a look much like the one Athessa had given her on the road.

“To the mirror; it is always useful, to be well aware of what others see when they look at you.” Then, after a pause, with a brighter smile, “And to put light into their eyes, send signals at a distance, read lips over your shoulder, look around corners, have something innocent to break to sharpness when you have no other weapon, and, perhaps most importantly,“ said with an incredible weight, “to make sure you have not smudged the line of your lips.” The Lady Alexandrie tsks.

“Catastrophique.”

[sulahnan]

Athessa turns to see that bright smile and finds herself reflecting it with delight and amusement at this comprehensive list.

"And here I thought I was clever for using a knife to see my reflection," she laughs. When she turns forward again, her hold on the mirror has shifted just enough that it reveals the reddish-purple line mottling her cheek, the wound healed over but still fresh and angry-looking. It gives Athessa pause, turns her expression contemplative for a moment before she reverses her hold on the mirror and offers it back to Lexie.

"Thanks."

[coquettish_trees]

But she doesn't take it.

"With whose eyes are you looking at yourself?"

[sulahnan]

"I don't know."

It's the most honest answer she can offer, because when she sees her own face in the glass she doesn't feel connected to it unless she makes an effort to assert: that's me. Is she looking through the eyes of a 16-year-old, surprised to see how little has changed? Is she looking through Yseult's eyes, seeing uncertainty and second-guessing in every minute expression?

She keeps holding the mirror out until it's clear that Lexie won't be taking that weight from her grasp, and she lets her hand fall to rest on her lap.

"Nobody's, I guess."

[coquettish_trees]

There is a long moment in which Alexandrie simply watches, and then she nods.

“It is yours then,” she says with a small tilt of her head at the mirror. “Until you know.”

[sulahnan]

Her head snaps up and she twists bodily to look at Lexie, book discarded, hand braced against the bench.

"What? No —" She tries to press the mirror back into the woman's hands, shaking her head. "I can't — it's...I mean just look at it. This isn't —"

Isn't what? Maybe it isn't so much of what it isn't, as what it is. The intricate gold filigree bordering the glass. It's too good for me. "I can't accept it."

[coquettish_trees]

"You may consider it leant," she says, entirely unwilling to accept it back, "if it should make you feel more at ease." And then she smiles, eyes brightening with mirth.

"Or work! I find nothing takes the shine from a gift quite like responsibility."

[sulahnan]

"Work," she echoes dully, and sits back. It feels like crumpling, though her posture doesn't actually change much. "Right."

Athessa heaves a breath and smiles, though it's colored with chagrin. Embarrassment at her own reaction in the face of Alexandrie's calm.

"Well if it's work then I guess I shouldn't have thanked you, huh? Wow, responsibility, thaaaanks."

Humor. It's her defense mechanism.

[coquettish_trees]

“Alas that beauty always carries such heavy responsibility,” she says with a rueful sigh.

A fighter’s eyes would likely see that scar with a conqueror’s pride, a spy’s with irritation that it must now be hidden, a hopeful lover’s... a bit differently.

[sulahnan]

On another day, in another circumstance, she'll look on it with the eyes of a fighter. Wear it like a badge of honor, the story carefully adjusted to captivate without revealing too much, the action embellished and the torture glossed over. On that day, maybe, Bastien and Lexie will be proud.

Today, however, she doesn't feel like a person. What she sees when she looks at herself isn't what anyone else sees. The only reason her reflection isn't whispering cries of selfish and unlovable at her is because she's making a conscious effort to douse those flames.

"Dunno how you do it, honestly."

[coquettish_trees]

"With an immensity of effort and a well-practiced mix of regard and disregard for the hearts of others," Alexandrie replies absently, leaning to examine Athessa with a critical eye and then carefully teasing a few pieces of hair from the braid forward on the side opposite where it lies to balance and soften the style. A smaller section on the braid side to then offset that.

[sulahnan]

"Sounds exhausting," she says.

Again, Athessa turns to facilitate Lexie's scrutiny and adjustments, content to be molded to her liking. With only a modicum hesitation, Athessa then leans against Lexie's leg, chin resting upon her knee. It's the sort of casual closeness she wouldn't think twice about expressing with Bastien, or Colin, or indeed Derrica (- perhaps she would think twice now -), but has never been her relationship to the Lady Asgard.

But that was before they saw in each other a similar anguish. Their masks are different, but the hurt is the same.

"If you need a break from that, I'm not stingy with my root stash."

[coquettish_trees]

There is something comforting about it: the weight of a body leaning against her leg, of a head on her knee, hair to smooth with fingers that only barely touch it. It is not the right body, the right head, the right hair, but it is the right holding and that is some small relief for bones that beg for it.

"I thank you. Although I would be a poor companion, I think," she replies ruefully. "I do not know for how long."