[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]

"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."

[keenly]

"'Course. And if you see any wild veg around, I can cook dinner with it later." Probably a pretty stupid thing to say. The Dalish can probably look at a forest and see a grocer's shop.

"Um." He stands up and offers his hand to help her stand. "I've been meaning to tell you something? On the topic of family."

[sulahnan]

Athessa doesn't think it's stupid. She nods and smiles, because she will be able to find them some vegetables to go with whatever meat she manages to catch.

On her feet again, hand still in Colin's grasp, she looks up at him curiously. For him to have been meaning to tell her something points to him overthinking either the words or the outcome, which in turn means that whatever he has to say is something he's worried about.

"What is it?"

[keenly]

All of those things are true.

“Um, Lexie came back from Antiva with some leads that might...lead? Me. To my family in Antiva. If there’s any to be found.”

[sulahnan]

"Oh. That's...that's great!"

The enthusiasm takes a little more effort to muster, not because she isn't happy for Colin to reconnect with his family, but because Athessa can't be sure what that means. Will they accept him? Will he leave?

"That's your mum's side of the family?"

[keenly]

"Yeah. Um. But I want to make sure you're all right with it?" A slight flinch. "You're more important to me than some strangers I've never seen in my life."

[sulahnan]

He's going to leave.

"Of course I'm alright with it, why wouldn't I want you to connect with your family? I mean—" She lets out a light huff and gestures around them. "That's what this is, after all."

[keenly]

"But...if I receive a reply on my letters, and if it's news that they are my family and they are alive, it's a big difference. 'Cause they'd be alive. And I don't want you to think that means I'm, um, replacing you? Because--"

He taps his chest where the stars are.

[sulahnan]

Athessa nods, and catches his hand in hers.

"We're family no matter what. But...what does it mean? If they're alive?"

He's going to leave.