[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

i. arrival

[sulahnan]

Upon reaching the clearing, Athessa dismounts from her horse, eyes fixed on the aravel. That's the most surprising thing to find. She'd halfway expected not to find anything, or that anything there was to find would be rotten beyond recovery.

But the aravel hasn't fallen apart or broken, despite what looks like the attempts of woodpeckers trying to drill into the masts. The sails sway gently in the breeze coming in off the sea, diffused by the trees until it's naught but a whisper.

She loops the reins back over the horse's neck so the roan won't step on them, then steps into the clearing slowly. Tentative. And nothing happens.

Another step. Still nothing. Of course nothing happens; no-one has been here in about eighteen years.

"I don't know what I expected," she says on a breathy laugh, with the flicker of an uncertain smile.

"But welcome to Sulahn'An, I guess."

[keenly]

Colin hooks an arm around Athessa to give her a squeeze.

"You all right?" It's probably too early for her to tell, but not too early to check in for the first of many times.

[sulahnan]

"Yeah...yeah. I'm — I'm alright. 'S just weird being back here."

A reassuring pat on his hand, a tight smile, and she separates from him again to walk around the fire pit in the middle of the camp.

The whittled wood used to make a spit over the fire is long since gone, but they should be able to find suitable branches for a new one while they're here. Some metal pots and pans and utensils are still intact and surprisingly not rusted, they seem in fine enough condition for use. These are the assessments she makes, in place of thinking about how hard it is to remember what things used to look like, how little she feels in this moment compared to the overwhelming trepidation she'd grappled with on the journey here.

That'll likely change once they've started to prepare the rites. Athessa kneels down to pick up the haft of a broken hatchet, uses it to gesture under the Aravel.

"That's where I hid," she explains, wry. "When I came back and everyone was gone. I don't think I could even fit under there now."

ii. ritual

[sulahnan]

placeholder for ritual group thread tl

athessa | preparation

[sulahnan]

a. camp
Before they can get to hunting, gathering, and otherwise just getting things in order for the burial itself, the camp needs to be resurrected. The fire pit needs to be cleared so a new fire can be lit there, a new spit constructed, and tents pitched. All the while, Athessa keeps an eye out for things that might be salvaged, or contributed as an offering.

They found her grandmother's staff in the aravel, a book of songs, a small metal box and other ephemera. It stands to reason that some things left outside the aravel might have stood the test of time, too.

b. carving
Athessa sits on a log, tending the fire when it needs tending and otherwise spending time whittling the bark from the wood they procured. The cedar branches are simple enough; they need be nothing more than branches for the rites. It's the oaken staves that pose some difficulty. Or, moreso than difficulty, tedium.

It just means there's plenty of work to be shared, and whoever sits beside Athessa will get an apologetic smile, a knife, and a walking stick to whittle into shape.

"I think we can just strip the bark," she says, dredging her blade beneath the bark and the wood itself. "It doesn't have to be anything fancy."

c. halla
Obviously, there have been prior moments of emotion. Tears shed and stifled. Athessa has been putting on a brave face thus far, and doing admirably well at recognizing when she needs to take a moment away from the camp (or in someone's arms) to feel what she needs to feel. But when she returns to camp with the halla following after, she seems to be barely holding it together.

She introduces the great deer to the aravel, the way she remembers her father doing. The halla sniffs the wood and bobs its head, scratching an itch on the edge of the landship. And it lets Athessa pet its neck, pat its flanks and it amiably snuffles at her hand despite there being no food there.

This isn't like hunting. This is heartbreaking.

athessa | mourning + wake

[sulahnan]

placeholder

A

[keenly]

Colin weighs the staff in his hands, examining the craftsmanship.

"I've never seen anything like it," he says. "Not even in the hands of the First Enchanter. I didn't know you had mage blood."

[sulahnan]

Athessa shrugs a shoulder.

“I think I was supposed to take after her, since my mum didn’t,” she says. It’d explain why the clan had been so relaxed about her role, if they were expecting her to become the Keeper’s Second. They might’ve just been waiting for her magic to manifest.

[keenly]

"Was she...what's the word? Watcher?"

[sulahnan]

“Keeper,” she corrects with a soft laugh. “She was the clan’s Keeper. Her apprentice would’ve been the Second. I...dunno if there’s such a thing as a Third, or a Fourth, now that I think of it.”

What is she even meant to do with a Keeper’s staff? It’s not like she can use it. It’s taller than herself, carved from some kind of knobby, knotty wood and stained a deep reddish brown. The grip is wrapped in soft leather (or it used to be soft, and will be again once properly conditioned), and where the wrap is tied off dangle a few charms, hand-made, hand-carved, and a little golden bell.

Athessa taps the bell with one finger and it jingles sweetly.

“Even with that, she’d manage to sneak up on us when we least expected.”

[keenly]

"It's very special," Colin murmurs, hand hovering over each element as he examines them. "In the Circle, all the apprentices were given the same staves. This...not only have I never seen the material it's made of before, but it's all been so tailored and personalized by your grandmother, to your grandmother. I wonder if that affects the magic, if the staff feels very personal to the mage who wields it."

He offers Athessa the staff. "It's an heirloom now. A portrait of your grandmother."

[sulahnan]

"I wouldn't know."

She hesitates, debating whether or not to take it. Like it might bite her if she does. Or like if she touches it, Keeper Danyhra will turn her gaze towards Athessa and be disappointed.

"What'll I even do with it? I can't use it."

[keenly]

"You can. Just not for magic." Colin's not really sure what else to suggest besides using an heirloom as a walking stick. It would be one thing if it were a ring or something, but a staff takes up quite a bit of space and doesn't transport well.

"Though it's up to you. Maybe it's...maybe since you can't bury your grandmother, you can bury this in her place."

[cozen]

Bastien is still with his horse—dismounted, but pulling untangling a broken stick from her mane and patting her neck—when he cranes his head around her to see where Athessa is talking about.

Of course he doesn’t like to think of her hiding there, tiny and frightened and alone. Goes without saying.

“Was there only the one?”

The aravel, he means.

[sulahnan]

"Maybe," she starts, but thinking about burying it feels...wrong. Maybe that's just her being childish. Remembering how much she wanted to hold the staff when she was little, remembering how often she was scolded for trying to squirrel it away.

"Or maybe you or Derrica could use it?"

[sulahnan]

"Yeah. I mean—"

She turns, taking in the whole of the camp before she looks to Bastien.

"Originally there were five, but one was destroyed somewhere in the mountains. Before I was born," That just leaves the other three unaccounted for. "The others were gone when I came back. Stolen, along with everyone else, I guess."

[keenly]

"...Is that what you want?"

[sulahnan]

Athessa glances aside, barely a flicker. (She almost looks at Derrica.)

"I want it to be of some use to someone," she says, finally reaching to trace the carvings with her fingertips. It just feels like wood. No spark, no sense of something more. "She might be gone but the magic isn't."

Tears track down her cheeks before she even realizes she's weeping, but she doesn't wipe them away or try to hide them. She just lets them fall, and nods, and smiles a little faltering smile.

"A healer should use it."

[keenly]

As much as they say they are family, it would feel odd to lay claim to something so personal. And, perhaps to his discredit, he has been thinking of it more as Athessa joining his family than vice versa, feeling it on some subconscious level as an improvement of her lot to be part of a human family.

He reaches out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

"All that has to be decided for now is whether we're taking it back with us to Kirkwall."

B

[cozen]

"That is good, because I am not an artist," Bastien says, settling in. He does know how to handle a knife, of course, even if rarely in this specific way. He slices off the first strip of bark with confidence and no awkward digging or catching.

[sulahnan]

Athessa nods again. They'll take it back with them and if neither he nor Derrica wants it, she'll just keep it in her room in case of emergencies, or give it to the Hahren of an Alienage as an olive branch.

"I...wish I could know what she would've wanted," she says, taking the staff and leaning it against the aravel. The little bell chimes, twinkly, and Athessa closes her eyes to just breathe, and let more tears fall, and take stock of her grief. "Do you think... D'you think it's okay to assume the best of someone when you didn't really know them?"

[sulahnan]

"You're just a different kind of one," Athessa corrects, fetching up her half-finished staff and stripping more bark from it. "If you could strip bark with words you would make something intricate and beautiful, I know it."

[keenly]

"Of course it is." He reaches out to wrap his arms around her tightly. "And no less likely to be accurate than assuming the worst."

[sulahnan]

Colin's embrace squeezes out the last of what his reassurance couldn't, and Athessa clings to him until she feels she can speak again without crumbling.

"Then I think — I hope she would be glad to know I'm here, giving rites even if I only half-remember them. A-and I hope she'd be happy knowing I wasn't alone for it. I know my dad would be."

The idea that her family would disapprove of her lack of elven friends hurts too much to think about, and it's been weighing on her more lately than ever before. Probably because she's confronting the memory of them here, knowing that if they were all killed, it was humans that did it. And if they were enslaved, it was humans who did that, too.

"Mum, though," she amends with a soft laugh, "She'd probably say something like twenty-nine years old and you still can't braid your own hair?"

[keenly]

A quiet chuckle. "I'll teach you, if that'll make her happy." He gives her a squeeze and pulls away to look at her face.

"Tell me about them. About your family."