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

[sulahnan]

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.

Comments

[sulahnan]

"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."

[keenly]

"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?"

[sulahnan]

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?”

[keenly]

"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.

[sulahnan]

"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."

[keenly]

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."

[sulahnan]

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?

[keenly]

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

[sulahnan]

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

[keenly]

"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."

[sulahnan]

"Oh, she was talking that way to Matthias," she says, correcting him. "When she talked to me she didn't bother acting patient. It was Rabbit, do zis and Rabbit, do zat. But like, she didn't have any doubt."

[keenly]

"I lived right outside the alienage when I was a kid. Saw elves go to and from work every day. Most days they didn't get bothered, since...every day. But now and then I'd see someone whistle, or stop one of 'em, or accuse one of planning to steal something."

He stops whittling briefly, gaze falling, a moment's pause as he remembers old shame. When he continues work, it's slower.

[sulahnan]

She sees that introspection, that pause, and tilts her head at him. Raises her eyebrows if she catches his eye. Go on.

[keenly]

Well, now he's put on the spot. He squirms, anxious about what she'll think about being invited into his family if she knows what they would probably think about her. But if he doesn't answer, her resulting theories might be worse than the truth. He clears his through gently.

"Mamma...didn't let elves stand in line to her food stand. Said they drove away business."

[sulahnan]

Her lips quirk, but it's not much of a smile. More a grimace, because how else would that story go? It's one she's used to by now. And who's to say her parents would've been alright with the three shemlen she brought into the camp?

"Human business. She was probably right about that."

She would've made up for it in elven business, though. Or, if her wares were good enough, people would still come, even if there were elves on line.

[keenly]

"That's...not all." A guilty glance. "I didn't think about it, as a kid. My family said things. Sometimes I repeated them. That got burned straight out of me in the Circle. One of my first instructors was an elven enchanter. At the first class I had with her, there was another student who heckled her. Called her a you-know-what. It was the only time anybody in that classroom treated her with disrespect."

An admiring little smile.

[sulahnan]

"Knife-ear? We've spent so long in Orlais recently—"

As if she could forget the slurs used against her all her life. She smiles to show him she's teasing, that she doesn't think worse of him for saying those things before he knew better.

"What'd she do to that other kid?"

[keenly]

"It was brilliant. She walked up to his desk so she towered over him, fixed him with this intense stare, and started slowly counting backwards from five. She got to two when he was all over himself apologizing and calling her ma'am. None of us wanted to tempt fate and find out what happened after she finished counting."

[sulahnan]

"Oof, the counting trick," she winces. "My mum used to do that, it was terrifying."

[keenly]

"Mine'd just swat us and we'd stop whatever it was we were doing. The counting was a lot scarier. Even without knowing apprentices got caned for talking like that to an enchanter. Not knowing actually made it worse. There was a rumor that if she finished counting, she'd put your soul in a jar and keep you on a shelf forever."

[sulahnan]

She chuckles.

"Maybe that's what happened to that creepy old skull at the Gallows."

[keenly]

He chuckles back. "Enchanter Taren's first victim, maybe."

Finished with the spit, he twirls it in one hand and passes it to her.

[sulahnan]

And she pretends to inspect it with a critical eye, but there's not much to criticize. It's a spit, there aren't splinters all over it, the bark is gone, it's fine. Perfectly good work, Colin.

"Nicely done. Now we can roast things, if we want," she says, and props it over the fire on the stakes. "Or make tea."

[keenly]

"What do we do now?" Colin dusts bits of wood and bark off his lap.

[sulahnan]

"Well, we gotta see if we can find acorns to plant — I brought some seeds in case we can't — and cedar branches, some oak that can be carved into staves, and I gotta find some hina plants for the stain. But for today, mostly I reckon we should get the camp sorted. I'd like to see if we can find any more stuff like we found in the aravel," she glances around them, trying to remember the placement of the other aravels and everyone's tents. "Anything we might use or that might make a nice offering."