faderift | And we are far, far from home

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And we are far, far from home

WHO: Araceli Bonaventura; open
WHAT: Parkour lessons part 2; writing letters home in the library; gals being pals with Korrin and Sina
WHEN: early Wintermarch;
WHERE: Skyhold; various locations
NOTES: Tavern thread is closed to Korrin and Sina but feel free to see and/or hear them

parkour;
It's been too long since she last organised real parkour lessons and so for a few days there have been notices tacked up on the bulletin board regularly to announce the start of a new batch of lessons. The ropes are gone now that she's more sure of her teaching skills and her place within Skyhold, and there are a few more places with bales of hay beneath different chunks of the battlements now, not just that first crumbling section of the wall down by the stables.

The warm up is still mandatory though, and for a newbie, she'll still insist on watching you fall though this time it's only from the fence and into the hay, and no, she doesn't care if you feel stupid, you'll feel more stupid if you fell badly and broke a few bones for your trouble.

library;
When the rift pulled her through from Castileos, it was still summer, seemingly endless days spent longing for a breeze to blow in off the seas, the markets packed, a riot of noise and colour. Even the smell of the fish market carried on the salt air is something she longs for as finds a seat somewhere quiet in the library, a neat stack of letters to one side of her as she stretches out her right arm with a muttered curse, trying to ease the cramp in it. A smear of ink stretches up from her cheek, across and over her nose. If someone were to read over her shoulder, they'd find letters addressed mainly to her mother, her father, or to a woman named Leandra more than to anyone else, all of them recounting bits and pieces of what she's seen here, what she's learned.

No one can say that a letter shoved through a rift won't go back home.

tavern;
Now it's not a crime if a person doesn't drink but sometimes a drink is good to help your forget, and well, Korrin likes drinking, Araceli likes drinking but Sina, well Sina might have told Araceli once that she's hasn't had a drink. Not of anything that Araceli or Korrin are used to, that's for certain. So what is a good friend to do? Well if they're Araceli Bonaventura then they call in Korrin Ataash who just so happens to be the person who introduced her to the strongest alcohol she'd ever tasted in her life.

Not that it's on offer for Sina. Babysteps. Babysteps and watering it down to an almost criminal degree but such is life.

wildcard;
[Feel free to have spotted her elsewhere, for whatever reasons you'd like!]

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If only Clint Barton hadn't taken it upon himself to rather rudely inform Araceli that places can become even colder when she could quite happily have spent her days knowing that Skyhold is as cold as it gets. Remote and cold might deter enemies but it doesn't make it easy for everyone to go about their business, or to get supplies where they need to be if they're urgently required.

"Is the skull the sigil? I saw some very intricate illustrations, though for a country to be related to such a thing seems odd, to an outsider, I'm afraid that Ferelden and Orlais demanded more attention in my studies." They're closer, the Inquisition seems to divert the most attention to them and so it makes sense. There's Antiva too but Antiva is a darker mirror of her home where there's a knife around each corner rather than true possibility because no one describes a knife to the spleen as a possibility unless they're the one holding the knife.

"We've never spoken but he's very hard to miss, especially when you spend time in the library, he has a moustache the captains would envy. It's the priest from Tevinter I've spoken with at length."

Far too charming for a priest from somewhere she's heard only terrible things of thus far and when compared to the rather staid women of the Chantry more heavily represented. Honestly? She'll take charming and keeping her guard up over having verses of the Chant recited to her.

Also fewer ridiculous hats because it's hard to pay attention and restrain her laughter at the same time.

"Never in my life did I think I would be a person to hoard socks and yet here we are, with a stash I shall guard with my life. And some of the robes I've seen the mages in look as useful against the cold as a thimble on a sinking ship."

Chantry sisters are all well and good, and have their right place in the world, but while Benevenuta's faith in the Maker is resolute, her interest in listening to his representatives on this earth chatter to her is - limited. She has disentangled herself on more than one occasion, politely regretful as she pleads responsibilities taking her away; it isn't as if she doesn't have work she might be doing.

The mention of a man from the Tevinter Chantry quirks an eyebrow - how strange to find one so far from home. Stranger still than herself, or Dorian, she thinks. She hasn't met him, herself; that will be interesting.

"Mages of the southern circles are not accustomed to traveling so far," she says, wry. "Nor am I, I suppose, but I was not sequestered in mine." She speaks with remarkable ease on the circles for someone who wouldn't support their return; her experiences in Nevarra were singular, in comparison to those down here, and even in Nevarra itself she was marked by privilege that not all northern mages enjoy.

She isn't unaware.

Vergil is charming, more charming than she expected when there were warnings of people from Tevinter but keeping an open mind is the best plan she can come up with if she wants information. You flatter men's egos if you want them to talk.

But northern mages being free does sound like a much better deal than here in the south, at least on paper.

"I can imagine few worse things than being told where I can and can't go, with someone able to watch me, ever since I was fifteen I made my own way in the world. If I didn't want to go home for days at a time, I didn't." A wild girl, one known by enough people to make sure she was never in more trouble than she could get herself out of. What she's been told by the circle mages here makes her skin crawl. "So is it that things are more lax the further north you are? Or was where you came from more lax? Forgive me, so many questions but it's better to learn from a person than a book."

"I quite agree," a little slyly, of better to learn from a person than a book; testing her weight as she moves, illustratively. She can't learn from reading about it the things she's going to learn from Araceli. (It's second-nature to be playful, to undercut a potentially politically dicey conversation with a light air.) "Ah - each Circle is unique. In Nevarra, mages are treated differently...we are respected. In some cases, revered. The Mortalitasi, my order, we occupy a position that southern mages cannot often rise to."

Vivienne is a singular creature. Benevenuta admires her.

A shrug- "But even in Nevarra, all Circles are not created equal, I cannot speak for those I did not know. My life began easier than many others, before even my magic."

"Mages here are taken from everything, that is my understanding thus far, and they only have ranks within the confines of their Circle. These Mortalitasi," and it rolls off the tongue easily enough compared to some things she's tried here, "are they recognised outwith? Or is it something uniquely Nevarran then?" Thus far her canvassing of mage opinion comes from Dalish elves with their own very different experiences, a Vashoth apostate living as a mercenary, and then former Circle mages mainly from Ferelden and Orlais. If she can add to what she plans to take back to her fellow rifters today, she'll count it as a win.

It's interesting anyway, learning about the mages and what they do here, something she can be delighted with rather than having to hear about every type of wild animal in the world wanting to eat her.

"But you came here for a lesson, and not to instruct me in the customs of the country. Come." Her head jerks in the direction of the wall, moving to stand on the bottom where the foundation juts out a little wider from the wall, up on her toes. "One day I hope everyone will do this with a run and jump, it's easier with speed and momentum, but if you keep your arms straight so they don't get tired it makes things easier. Hips always at a right angle, and on your toes or the balls of your feet, never anywhere further back or the weight is in entirely the wrong place. Balance is the most important part so if you're pulling yourself up, you want to be pushing with the legs. And breathing - exhale on the push, inhale on the pull."

Of course she'll demonstrate, comfortable with hanging in the air once she starts up, looking down to see if more is needed though the mortar and brickwork here make it a good place to start, plenty of finger and toeholds within easy reach. Sometimes it's good to be as short as she is because if she doesn't have to stretch, it's a certainty that no one else will.

An easy gesture, where she might've shrugged again if she hadn't already - "I was not confined by my Circle, even before I joined the ranks of the Mortalitasi."

She had been a fully-fledged mage in her own right when she began down that path, the secrets of her order whispered to her by the spirit of a mage who had walked it in life through the mouth of the jeweled skull that she keeps, still. She had already been a member of the court, as well, dutiful and smiling at her mother's side, navigating the murky world of political influence with a deft hand and an eye for both weaknesses and worthy potential.

She had had little expectation of ever leaving her homeland, however, expecting instead that pursuing opportunities to learn like this one would be necessarily limited to that which she could bring to herself. As she says, attending the lesson carefully, studying how Araceli moves and committing the guidance she gives to memory,

"We are not confined, but there is little incentive to leave Nevarra when we are quite aware of what to expect outside her borders. Knight-Commander Baratheon felt it his duty to warn me, for instance, that I cannot expect to be treated here as I am accustomed to in my home."

Being Lady Thevenet means something in Nevarra that in the south is superseded by being a mage. And being a Necromancer, something frightening, unsettling, not trusted.

"I suppose that leaves me with a last question of what they are, exactly, though the simplest explanation will do, wrapping my head around magic might take me until I am old and grey." If she happens to be here that long, not a prospect she relishes but one she might have to address, but the more complicated the magic is, the harder it is to remember the most important points for later when she puts the pieces she has together.

Never did she think something would be more difficult than having to play a round of cards in a packed tavern trying to listen to the person at the next table making deals yet here she is. But a challenge is a challenge, so she is yet to be truly bored, though she could do without the headaches that come with it.

The snort at the mention of that name is less delicate than she would like but who enjoys being accused of something you don't even understand in fullness? "A more polite way to put his message than I would have used." But then she'd been called demon to her face not too long after and it had felt like a slap, the way guilty until proven innocent always rankles.

"Perhaps where I come from is naive or simple but we all like to follow treating another as you wish to be treated and so far it has worked well enough that war is an old enough thing that there is no living memory of it."

"I can hardly imagine what words he might have chosen to describe my order," Benevenuta says, off that indelicate snort - for all the wry twist of her mouth and the clear affection in her voice, it isn't as if she's somehow ignorant of what an absolute bastard Stannis Baratheon is, or would particularly begrudge someone else's observation of that fact. She had found him kind, in his way, but what she is certain he would've disputed calling friendship between them had been unique. She knows; she had pursued it with that thought in mind.

It's the same impulse that has her playing chess with Nerva; the Maria Hills of the world are already on the right track. It's the problem children that need to be coaxed to reason.

"We of the Mortalitasi are responsible for the dead, in Nevarra," she settles on. "I am certain that you will hear, if you wish to, many superstitions about what this means."

Her smile is a gentle thing - she is quite aware of the perception of the Mortalitasi in particular and Nevarran beliefs in general outside of her beloved homeland. As a rule, she doesn't take it particularly personally, and she thinks it likely that Araceli will be as interested in what she might have to say about them as what she might be able to find out about how they're perceived.

It's a gesture of peace toward the rest of the Inquisition in general, to note and in noting dismiss kindly any prejudices. She isn't naive; she's certain that they're there.

"Whatever they would be, I'm sure there would have been enough condescension to feed a family." Thus far, she's managed to avoid Templars to the best of her knowledge, relying on what others have said about them to get some sort of an impression but that won't last forever. If she wants to live here and be part of things, that means actually spending time with all present to know what their lives have been like.

Already a mage or two has opened her eyes to the Templars perhaps being shackled almost like they are, not quite to the same extremes but enough to have her wanting to know more.

"You are in charge of funeral arrangements?" And then, after the briefest of hesitations, because she tries not to judge the customs of others but what could be more opposed than fire and water? "The burning of the dead is the custom of Thedas, for the humans at least, I was told that much."

As awful as it sounds to her, burning someone and letting them turn into ash so that there's nothing more they can do, no way to give back to the things that gave to them. Only she has the feeling that it might be one of those things that marks her out as different, and thus far straying too far from what Thedas calls normal can be a very risky move.

"It is the more common custom," Benevenuta agrees, neutrally; she will not readily be seen to criticise it for reasons not dissimilar to what prompts Araceli to caution in raising the subject, "but it is not the custom of my people. I- not funeral arrangements, no."

She considers for a moment, how to describe what she has leave to explain (so much of what they do is shrouded in secret; she doesn't always agree with that, but she's too accustomed to keeping her cards close to feel chafed by it or be tempted to give more than she ought). Following Araceli carefully, she is quiet a short time - both what they do and the discussion require focus, and she prioritises the first over the former.

When there's an easy moment to speak, she says,

"We preserve the bodies of the dead, in Nevarra. When a soul crosses into the Fade, a spirit is displaced by it - we guide wisps, in place of spirits, that they be given a safe home in our world and that demons not take the opportunity a death might provide them."

A brief smile - "To give of yourself to the world is the only cause; we the Mortalitasi do not believe our service ends with our lives."

With the wall crumbling in so many sections, and with it being one of the lower levels of Skyhold, the climb is short enough, and the final push up over the battlements is easy. Still, she always throws herself up quick as she can to offer a hand if it's needed because the arms sometimes get a bit shaky the first time they're asked to do this.

Better here though than out in the wild if a sudden hillside climb goes awry because on the cliffs, there might not always be time for someone to grab them.

"So a voluntary possession?" Thankfully someone did explain that concept to her, that the spirits can lean close and peer at people, and it makes sense in a way that if they're guided that they might not be murderous. Unless the Mire was an isolated case, and she has to think that some of that has to be explained by the kind of people who would choose to live in a place like that.

"I think that I understand, though there is nothing left of the body the way we do things. We give them to the sea; the sea offers us life when we sail to distant lands for what we can't grow, and when we fish. We return to the sea that we came from and feed what fed us in life." Maybe it's not so much service for them but acceptance of something reclaiming them, taking them to a home they don't get to see in life except in the glimpses of drowning men and women if they're rescued in time.

It's not without some visible gratitude that Benevenuta takes that hand - she doesn't seem too unsteady, but it's her first time and she's cautious, keenly aware of the tumbles she took (and the worse ones she only barely averted taking) on her first journey up to Skyhold. If Dorian hadn't been there -

Well, it didn't bear thinking of.

"In a manner of speaking," as far as voluntary possession goes. She warms a little, at the way Araceli's interest in understanding seems genuine; what she offers in return is interesting. It isn't so shocking that the rifters might actually have something to offer, it's just - that she hadn't really thought. She hadn't thought they didn't; she'd simply not thought about them at all, most of the time.

Perhaps it was a bit of an oversight. Maybe.

"Yours is a cyclic ritual. I think it must be beautiful, in its way."

“I would say the worst part is done but some still balk at the fall even if it’s the simplest and easiest part.”

Falling is easy, if you don’t think, and in Thedas there’s too much thinking. Everything about the Fade, the mages and the templars, the Chantry, the Divine - well maybe that’s why she’s had more and more signing up because when all you have to think about is checking where your hands and feet need to be, to remember to let out all the air in your lungs and just let go? But she’s not canvassing for opinion, climbing is fun and useful, anything she learns in the course of it just a happy bonus she can pass on to interested parties.

It helps, usually being the only rifter at them, only having to speak for herself and learn whatever she likes because add another world again and things get complicated quickly.

“Do they talk then? I don’t think the ones in the Mire were a good example and usually it was just some...strangled grunt before one of them lurched towards us.” Not that she knows if she’d be comforted by the dead speaking but there would be a sort of wisdom to come from them. In remembering the past and the mistakes.

But then home isn’t quite so mired in it, able to go build a new home instead of scrabbling for lost relics.

“Isn’t that the way of everything? The tide goes in and out as it ever did and ever will, the moon waxes and wanes, women know it better than anyone. We have one life that we live, what use would I have for any of my things when I’m gone? I’ll be off beneath the waves where we came from, let another girl grow strong eating the fish that fed off me.”

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And we are far, far from home

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