faderift | [player plot | closed] home isn't a place

Entry tags:

[player plot | closed] home isn't a place

WHO: Athessa, Bastien, Colin, [Derrica]
WHAT: Giving belated rites to long-dead family
WHEN: Harvestmere
WHERE: Somewhere in the forest...
NOTES: cw for animal death

ARAVEL.

It takes a little more than a day to navigate through the Planasene Forest, riding at an easy pace, headed southwest. The terrain isn't unreasonable, but there are still fallen trees and unexpected cliffs overlooking the Waking Sea and places where the horses simply refuse to walk for some ineffably equine reason.

Early the second day, they find it. Home, if that word even applies to the overgrown clearing where the remnants of Athessa's clan lay.

The Aravel is still there, still intact. Weather-worn, but ironbark doesn't rot, and the enchantment on the landship is still alive. The same can't be said for the surrounding camp, with its tattered cloth and discarded tools, a ring of stones around a fire pit that's grown over with moss and plants and bugs. There are no bones offering testament to slaughter, nor signs of blood or strife. Just abandon.

PREPARATION.

There's a fair amount of stuff to do before the burial. Acorns need to be gathered, cedar branches collected, oaken staves carved, food hunted and harvested. Athessa will do the hunting herself, and on the day of the burial she leads a halla into camp, alive. She doesn't look proud, or particularly excited about being able to find one.

RITUAL.

Not far from the camp is a cave, rocky and shallow, with a flat stone floor. It was once an altar, or something like it. Faded markings, a few bundles of once-dried herbs that have since fallen from their line and litter the ground, and two decades' worth of neglect. This is where, once the detritus is swept away, the halla will shed its mortal coil.

But before that, incense is burned, a prayer song is sung, and leaves of a hina plant are crushed to a paste and applied to the palms and face. It stains the skin red, to represent the blood of the halla (without actually being blood), and the blinding of Ghilan'nain. The stain will fade before they return to Kirkwall.

BURIAL.

After the halla has been bled, skinned, and butchered, its heart offered to Andruil, it's just a matter of carving the horns into charms and burying them with the acorns. Twenty-five in all; one for each clan member. Each acorn will need to be planted with room to grow, so there's some trekking about to be done in order to find suitable plots. Then, the cedar branches and oak staves are laid upon the soil.

As they work, Athessa sings:
Melava inan enansal
ir su aravel tu elvaral
u na emma abelas
in elgar sa vir mana
in tu setheneran din emma na
lath sulevin
lath araval ena
arla ven tu vir mahvir
melana ‘nehn
enasal ir sa lethalin

And it's easy to see why the stories about luring unsuspecting travelers to their fates came into being. The song drifts through the trees, reaching for heartstrings and pulling at them, melancholy and pleading.

WAKE.

The mourning may not be finished (nor will it ever truly be), but there must be room for celebration as well. The feast that is prepared by Colin, with the assistance of the other three, is a combination of Dalish, Rivaini, and Antivan, which is the result of trying to reverse engineer traditional recipes that escape the memory. There are hearth cakes, roasted root vegetables, a hearty halla stew (with perhaps more spices than Dalish cooking typically has), sweet grains and fruits, and a few bottles of a finely aged rowan mead to share.

Good food and good company around a fire, reminiscing about loved ones lost, sharing memories. Laughter interspersed with brief, bittersweet moments of silence.

THE RETURN.

The group returns to Kirkwall right on schedule, with ample time to loiter before returning the horses to the stables and catching the ferry back to The Gallows. Though the pall still lingers, it's not heavy or oppressive. It's just a bedsheet, diffusing the morning light until it's time to wake up and get out of bed.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"What was he god of?"

“She wasn’t a god at all.”

"...Oh." Colin actually looks more interested now. "Oh. I get the feeling this isn't like Andraste's love story with the Maker."

Athessa smiles and shakes her head. “It’s definitely different.”

Not that she knows much about that love story. She sniffs, just a remnant of having cried so recently, and it serves as her taking a breath in preparation for the story.

“One day, Ghilan’nain met a strange hunter in the woods. She didn’t know him, but she saw that he’d killed a hawk, pierced its heart with an arrow. Ghilan’nain was so angry at the man, because the hawk was one of Andruil’s favorite creatures, and she demanded he make it right by making an offering, but the hunter refused. With all her righteous fury, Ghilan’nain called out to her goddess to curse him so he could never hunt again, could never take another life.

“And it worked. The hunter couldn’t hunt; his arrows would fly astray, his prey would always escape. His friends and family began to mock him. What good is a hunter that can’t hunt? Ashamed, he vowed to find Ghilan’nain and make her pay for what she’d done to him.”

It seems a bit disproportionate, cursing a man forever over a bird, but he wants to be sensitive--this is her heritage, her culture--and nods for her to continue as he tests the flexibility of a nearby sapling.

“He found Ghilan’nain while she was on a hunt with her sisters, and pretended to have learned his lesson,” she continues, finding a small log that won’t burn very long, but that will make decent kindling. “He begged her to come with him, to teach him how to make a proper offering to Andruil. She was moved by his plea, and followed him into the woods. But as soon as they were far enough away from her sisters, the hunter turned on Ghilan’nain.

“First, he blinded her. And then he bound her the way hunters bind their kills, but because he was cursed, he couldn’t end her life. So he left her there to die on her own.”

Her lips quirk, remembering Bastien’s reaction when she told him this legend. Something to the tune of Men are awful.

“Ghilan’nain prayed to the gods for help. She prayed to Elgar’nan for vengeance, to Mythal for protection, but with all her heart she prayed to her beloved Andruil. The goddess sent her hares to chew through the ropes that bound Ghilan’nain, but she was still blind and couldn’t find her way home. So Andruil transformed her into a beautiful white deer, the first halla. Ghilan’nain returned to her sisters in this new shape and they in turn tracked down the hunter and brought him to justice.”

"I like that a lot better than Andraste and the Maker." He glances over. "D'you believe in them, then?"

Her lips quirk, glad to hear that the story is well-received. It used to strike her as something of a downer, but as she's gotten older and thought on it more, she finds it beautiful. Sad, still, but it describes a kind of love that a lot of stories don't.

"I try to," is her answer. "I think I'd know more about whether or not I believed if I had someone who knew better, to answer my questions."

Athessa shrugs, testing another sapling. This one should do fine.

"Ghilan'nain is said to guide the dead through the Beyond to the Eternal City. There, the souls live on and gain enlightenment, and Andruil is reunited with her beloved. That's...part of why sacrificing a halla is supposed to gain Andruil's favor, before a burial. But I dunno how that works, or is supposed to work, or whatever. I just know it's a nice story."

Colin takes the little saw out from his kit and gives her a smile.

"Then if she's real, then whatever honors her, she'll give us. Yeah?"

"Maybe. Or maybe it's more like...if we find what honors her, then she'll honor us."

Maybe it's like what Mhavos said, when she told him about the Vir Tanadahl. It's about asking for blessings, not begging forgiveness. (Except Athessa does want forgiveness, in part.) Holding onto the sapling to brace it, she points out where Colin should cut.

"It's hard to know where the line is, between what really happened and what was made up afterwards to make it mean something."

Colin kneels and begins to saw through the young tree. It's too loud to speak over the sound, so it's not until he's done that he speaks again, coming to his feet.

"I, um. I don't actually disbelieve in the possibility of gods. I think there's probably something beyond the Veil, an explanation for all those stories that created all those religions. Something at the root of it. But to think any god would punish me, or even just ignore my sincere attempts to honor her, just because I didn't do it exactly right? I think she knows you'll do your best, and you will do your best, and that's what she'll honor."

A little shrug.

Athessa nods, listening. They haven't talked overmuch about religion, or their beliefs, even when talking about Andraste or Spirits. But Colin's willingness to think the best of the gods she inherited definitely injects her with a bit more confidence.

"That's a nice way to think about it," she says, smiling. "Do you think the Maker exists alongside the Creators and gods like...like mine?"

"I...don't know." His gaze falls and he holds the sapling to one side, twirling it idly in one hand while the other gets shoved into a pocket. "If there are gods, I hope he's the one who's least like how he's described. But if he really did give Andraste visions saying there are no other gods and everyone's got to worship him instead no matter what, I think he might be a dick anyway."

"Yeah that sounds like kind of a shitty relationship, honestly."

The most extreme monogamy in the known world, perhaps.

"But if the elven gods are real, then there's plenty of proof that gods can be assholes, too."

"That's fine. It's not a bad thing to have gods who remind us of ourselves. The bit I have the problem with is when the god insists that the assholery is actually righteousness and it can do whatever it wants and still be holy. Sets a bad example."

"Yeah," she laughs, sardonic. "Just look at where it led the Chantry."

Her smile widens into a grin when she looks at him, and then she tips her head and starts to walk back towards camp.

"The elven gods, far as I remember, became gods by becoming enlightened, not by being infallible. They had to work for their status and earn it, and then pass on their knowledge to us when we earn it. I think...a god's purpose is to guide us, not by doing it for us, but by teaching us. And someone saying I'm right because I said so isn't teaching anything."

"The Chant of Light says the Maker appeared to Andraste, showed her a vision of the Black City, and told her everyone has forgotten him and turned to false gods and for that, he forsook them. Andraste begged him to give mortals another chance and he said he would give them one last chance, if his word was spread to the rest of the world and people listened. But I don't see why seven people could ruin everything for the rest of the world if he's that broken up about losing his beloved children? Why are we so obsessed with winning back a god that petty?"

The look on Athessa’s face conveys the doubt she feels, doubt that it’s worth it to try to win the favor of a god like that. A god that puts so much responsibility on one person, blames innocents for his own failures, blames them for reaching for love or simply recognition when all he gave them was neglect.

“Doesn’t make sense,” she agrees, adjusting her hold on the bundle of firewood and kindling and the like so none of it will fall as she steps over an old log. “On a number of levels. Why would he force one woman, one slave, to convince the whole world? Why wouldn’t he just remind everyone of his existence himself? If he loved his creations so much, why would he be so willing to forsake them? Why would he let himself be forgotten in the first place?”

"His first children were the spirits, and he didn't like that they couldn't really change, even though he made them that way. Then he made people and they changed too much. I think there are good things in the Chant of Light, I think Andraste was an admirable woman for the things she did, and I feel very proud that she was Fereldan, but the things her followers have done in the name of her Maker, using her words..."

He gives a low whistle as they reach the camp.

"Yeah, people'll justify a lotta awfulness as being the Maker's will or whatever."

The firewood gets deposited beside the ring of stones in the middle of camp, and Athessa starts to arrange the tinder and kindling for the fire. With flint and steel she ignites it and breathes life into it. Builds a structure of the wood around it. It's a process she's always found soothing.

"The hypocrisy doesn't really start to stand out until you look at everything side by side."

He sits down and takes out a knife to begin stripping the sapling.

"Who is supposed to even know what the Maker's will is? He's gone. Beyond the Fade, beyond everything. Last mortal who spoke to him was Andraste."

She stabs two stakes into the ground, making a thin X shape, then does the same on the opposite side of the fire. Those will support the spit, and they can roast meat or suspend a soup pot from it, if they want.

"I don't think people really care what his will is, so long as they can twist it to mean they're right," she says it and thinks back on that farmer's wife, in Ghislain. The one Matty tore off after in some misguided attempt to defend Athessa. "There was a woman in Ghislain who spoke about serving the Maker as if she knew, without a doubt, what he wanted and how to please him, and it just...didn't matter what anyone said to the contrary. It was like everyone else was beneath her, or stupid and she was being so patient, the way people are with simpletons."

Is it better to be regarded with suspicion, or condescension?

"Was she a nob? Landed? Or was she like me?"

"Some farmer's wife. Landed, but poor."

"Yeah, that's a status thing." Colin reaches for his waterskin and takes a sip. "I mean, obviously. But it's not just Orlesians actually believing they have the status they have because the Maker intended it, but poor people everywhere really like looking down on elves. They've got no one else to look down on, so."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject