player plot | when my time comes around, pt 2

[cozen]

WHO: Anyone who didn't die here.
WHAT: A sad week.
WHEN: Approx Solas 21-30
WHERE: Granitefell, the Gallows, wherever else you want.
NOTES: A second log for this plot. Additional posts/logs will cover the time travel/fix-it components—this one is for the time period where no one knows that's a possibility.

Those who fly out to Granitefell arrive a few hours after dawn to find a smoldering gravesite and fewer than twenty living souls, Riftwatch's five included. The survivors have done what they can in the intervening hours, but there's still work to be done to tend to wounds, move the bodies—especially the delicate ones—and help the remaining villagers, mostly children, build pyres to see to their own dead before they're relocated somewhere safer. Somewhere with roofs that aren't collapsed or still lightly burning.

Carts to carry Riftwatch's dead won't arrive for some time afterward, and bringing them back takes just as long. It's a few days before they're returned to the Gallows, preserved from decay as best everyone could manage but nonetheless in poor shape from the battle. Pyres are an Andrastian tradition for a reason—to prevent possession—but burials and mummification aren't so unheard of that anyone will be barred from seeing to their loved ones as they see fit.

Before, during, and after any funerary rites, there are absences. Empty beds, empty offices, voices missing from the crystals, pancakes missing from Sundays. Belongings that need to be sorted and letters that need to be written. And, perhaps most pressingly, work that still needs to be done, including the work left behind by those who can no longer follow through on their own projects or tie up their own loose ends, as the world and its war keep moving steadily onward as if nothing happened at all.

Comments

[wearyallalone]

He nods at her permission and comes to sit with her. At first, he mainly looks up at the stars, leaving her to her drawing if she resumes it. Quiet company on the breezy rampart. It reminds him of Skyhold, briefly, somehow reversed; a hot summer night below but a chill here, compared to looking out at snow and feeling the warmth of the sun on his hands and face. He wonders if anyone has written to the Inquisition about what happened at Granitefell. (Less charitably, he wonders if anyone at Skyhold would especially care.)

Some time later, he says, "Hard to sleep, these days." Quiet, observational. He doesn't know whether she'll pick it up or let it lie, but he doesn't seem particularly concerned.

[notathreat]

"Harder than usual," Ellie murmurs finally, after several long heartbeats. Her charcoal rubs softly over the paper. Precious, rare, but she owns it, it was given to her. And so it should be used.

She smears her raw fingertips over the page, whispering a shadow underneath a chin.

"I don't think anyone here has slept more than a couple of hours at a time since we came back."

[wearyallalone]

"Probably not," he agrees, quietly. A few more moments of quiet before he adds, still looking up, "I envy you something useful to do with your hands. Pamplemousse almost nipped me yesterday, I think because I'd groomed her too often. Overstimulated." There are plenty of other griffons, and horses for that matter, but it's not a very portable solution for what to do with his hands. Certainly compared to sketching.

[notathreat]

"Never too late to start," Ellie says with a shrug, and pauses in her work. She turns to a fresh page, offers that and the charcoal over to him.

"You want to try? I've got paints and and a dulcimer in my room, and more of these. So it's not like I'm going without."

[wearyallalone]

He's surprised, and a little bit touched; certainly he had nothing of the kind in mind when he raised the topic, and he finally glances over at her. "Are you sure?" he asks, softly. "I know everything's a bit stretched thin, and I really would be a rank beginner. It's a generous offer." But it's clear said offer isn't without at least some appeal.

[notathreat]

"When people know you draw, they get you art supplies for Satinalia." It's not quite a smile, but Ellie's expression softens enough to make her look tired rather than pained, and she bobs the sketchbook and charcoal again.

"I've got plenty more. Go ahead."

[wearyallalone]

He takes them with care, though without hesitation. "...thank you," he says, heartfelt. It is, perhaps, undercut a moment later when he feels compelled to ask, "Do you have any suggestions, of how to begin?"

The blank page feels a bit as if it's judging him, though he's certain it's just his own nerves about doing the wrong thing.

[notathreat]

Ellie tilts her head to one side, thinking. She has this problem a lot. When she was a kid it was just about doodling in the margins of her assignments, not trying to make art.

"Try putting the charcoal down on the page, making a few random marks," she says, reaching out to demonstrate. She takes his hand, and the fact that it's imprecise adds to it. "Now squint at it. Does it look kinda like anything?"

She tilts her head. It could be pretty much anything with four legs, probably.

"Draw that."

[wearyallalone]

He tilts his head, considering the marks. Given that he'd just mentioned the griffons, it's easy for his mind to suggest it. He makes a line or two, connecting the random marks. "It's been a very long time since I drew anything other than a scouting map," he says, probably unnecessarily. But as they start to shape up, his attempt is no worse than an average untrained doodler. And it is, in fact, something to concentrate on that's not the people they've lost or how empty the Gallows feels.

[notathreat]

"Griffons and horses are super fuckin' hard to draw," Ellie says with a huff that isn't quite a laugh, just the barest edge of a sense of humor at her own years of practice.

But the fact that Vanya manages to make something recognizable as a griffon is a strong start.

"You're doing amazing for a beginner without a reference."

[wearyallalone]

It gets a hint of a smile from him. "That is very generous. I feel like ... hm. I know how the griffon is put together, so that helps. But in my mind, I see it in a world with depth." He makes a small gesture with his free hand, encompassing the space between the two of them as an illustration. "I do not know how to make it look like depth when it is flat. Maps, they are more abstract by design."

[notathreat]

"Shadows," Ellie answers with a nod. "There's something called- fuck, I don't know what it's called."

Helpful, very helpful.

"Like, you know how when you're looking down a long straight road and it looks like the sides kinda... converge? Like it's getting narrower? Even though you know it stays the same width?

"Art does that too. So if you're doing feathers-" Ellie holds out her fingers to take the charcoal, and if allowed, she'll sketch a griffon head and the ruffled mane of feathers that surrounds him. "-the ones closest to you are larger, more detailed. The others in the back are smaller, more shadowed, less distinct. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes you can get away with the back part just being a shadowy smudge."

She demonstrates, with the edge of her finger. Charcoal's good for this. She's different when it comes to her art. Like the shadows that normally lurk in her eyes shift a bit. Make it obvious just how young she still is.

[wearyallalone]

"So it's somewhat as if ... you are trying to look, or imagine, and not see 'feathers' but see the particular shapes and colors. To sort of unsee the whole the way your mind puts it together."

He doesn't feel he's describing it well, but he can see what she's doing all the same. And they're both better, he feels, for having something to focus on.

When she hands the charcoal back, he sketches out a simple wooden box, but tries to do what she did, playing with the front being bigger and the back being smaller. It's still not quite there without any practice, but he can at least grasp the concept.

[notathreat]

"Yeah, and if you play to that illusion a little, it gives the art depth."

Ellie nods at the example he's sketching, leaning in to show him how to blur the darkest shadows, bring the bits of focus into sharp relief.

"The simpler the drawing is the easier it is to apply. Stuff starts getting tricky when you add other textures and more places to focus. But a lot of that just comes with practice. You figure out how you like to do stuff, what looks good to you, and then you have more tools to use."