[open] beach episode volume 2: gallows edition

[altusimperius]

WHO: everybody who wants
WHAT: (lukewarm) BEACH PARTY (on rubble, in harbor)
WHEN: late Justinian
WHERE: the Gallows, amidst its newly-acquired sea view
NOTES: he's trying

I. Prep

He didn't ask for help overtly, but Benedict is clearly working hard setting up the space he's designated for the company to have their beach staycation: drapings taken from his own stash and salvaged from the Gallows' erstwhile guest rooms are drawn across glyphed-in-place poles to create shade. He's hauled out a table, onto which he proceeds to place a variety of whatever canapés he could afford to procure with his own wages-- it's not a feast, all right-- and beside which he rolls two barrels of decent-ish wine.

From the baths come a stack of towels piled high in his arms, hindering his vision to such a degree that he may crash into someone not paying attention; pillows and the like come next, in armloads that take multiple trips, by the end of which he's visibly out of breath.

Lastly, it's his very own water pipe making an appearance, which he arranges amidst comfortable ground seating mimics how his room used to look: in fact, most of the accoutrements here are his personal belongings.
As such, he knows just how to set everything to create an attractive, if minimalist, space for an afternoon's leisure.


II. Party?

It may not be an all-out bash like their excursion to the sandier shores of the Waking Sea some years ago, but this, if nothing else, is an opportunity for work on the Gallows to pause in palatable increments. One can be clearing rubble or cataloguing property for the morning, then pop over for an hour of sunbathing and a glass of wine; they're all within calling out distance of the courtyard, and the party likely bleeds into the day's work in a manner somewhat more comfortable than if it were sequestered.

That said: the early summer sea water is cold, the sun is out but meek behind occasional cloud cover, and the festivities are on clean-swept stone rather than sand. The view across the water is of mainland Kirkwall, and all that that entails.
But it's none of it so bad, for anyone looking to take a break. A few musicians even show up a bit later in the afternoon, and Benedict provides a bonfire in the center of the party space as the sun goes down.

Anything brought to share is met with effusive thanks from Benedict, who ensures its appropriate placement and distribution. He doesn't spend much time relaxing himself, instead making the rounds with the air of a fussy host, where he's quick to offer refills or alternatives in libations, or diversions for unsatisfactory activities.

[make your own starters, do your thing, go hog wild-- if you have logistical questions feel free to ask on plurk or discord]

Comments

astrid runasdotten | ota

[brennvin]

The water’s cold, but it’s nothing against frigid lakes in the mountains, so Astrid takes her first opportunity to plunge into it at noon and go swimming: doing stubborn laps for exercise, daring someone to race her out to a rocky promontory jutting out of the water. After reaching the rock, she hauls herself up and then sprawls in the warmth, resting her wobbly legs, an arm flung over her face to block out the sun.

As the late afternoon wears on, she hauls one of the griffons down to the beach, doing some bonding exercises with Potato: a click of the tongue, harness training, throwing things for her to fetch. When Astrid sits down to take a break, Potato forgets how big she is and crawls onto the woman’s lap, practically pinning her to the ground (“Oof!”). Help pass Astrid some of the canapes, or maybe help her with training the griffon.

She donates some akvavit for taste-testing — she’s been steeping some liquor with the intent to help stock the Gallows tavern — and will offer eye-watering shots around the bonfire, asking, “So what sort of hobbies do you have here?”

( feel free to wildcard, or hmu @ quadrille on discord if you wanna brainstorm; happy to do bespoke starters! )

shots

[succise]

"I — Maker's breath,"

That's strong! She only sipped it and now she's holding the rest of the glass at arm's length, nose scrunched up. She coughs into her shoulder to muffle the sound. "What is this?"

It burns on her tongue; Vega, of course, is accustomed to good wine, usually red, served with dinner. Not... this, while seated around a fire.

[brennvin]

Astrid bites back a full-bridled laugh — it’s never good to seem to be laughing at Vega, she’s learned this by now — and instead just picks up the unlabelled bottle and tilts it back and forth, scrutinising the brew in the firelight. It looks a little distressingly herby.

“Akvavit. Based off the name aqua vitae in Tevene, I’ve heard, although it’s mostly drunk in the Frostbacks so I’ve been trying to make my own.”

The liquor’s a pale straw-gold colour, and she’d strained it through a cheesecloth into their glasses; experimental, still trying to find the right herb-and-spice mixture, the right strength. “S’mainly caraway seeds, star anise, and fennel seeds in vodka, but my uncle’s family recipe had dill and lemon so I used a bit of that. Still trying to get the proportions and strength right, so I’m not sure if it’s been steeping long enough…”

It’s very definitely been steeping long enough.

Hopeful: “What d’you think?”

[succise]

"If it is drunk in the Frostbacks, maybe it should stay there." It seems so crude to make your own alcohol instead of buying it when people who know how to make it very well make a lot of it, and sell it, but what would Vega know. It must be an inane hobby of Astrid's. She cautiously brings the glass back toward herself, taking a sniff.

"Have you tried it yourself? It is quite... overpowering."

She can still taste it on her tongue, the dill and caraway. Lemon, a bright, sour tang at the back of her throat. She sips a very small amount and holds it on her tongue to try and really taste it, but coughs and ruins it, getting it down her chin.

"I think—" hoarsely, "You must mix it with something. Water. Anything."

[brennvin]

“Well, if you’re gonna be a pussy about it,” Astrid says cheerfully, “then sure, yeah. You could water it down. Maybe cranberry juice or elderflower cordial or something could work if you needed a juice.”

She pours herself a thimbleful, and then looks ruminatively into the slightly cloudy liquid. “The first boy I ever hooked up with, we were drunk on akvavit, and he taught me to take it all down in one go.” A beat, and something sheepish flickers across her face. “Erm. The akvavit, I mean.”

[succise]

"I—"

Vega doesn't even get the chance to say excuse me, she simply snaps her mouth shut and instantly goes tomato-red in the face. Horrified admiration leads her to silently down the rest of her shot in one go, as intended. She thunks her empty cup down loudly to prove it and cups her hand delicately across her mouth, just in case.

It seems fine.

She rasps, "You're awful," but it's clear she doesn't actually mean it, said with such little bite and a shifting of weight in front of the fire, a delicate shudder. "If I ever spoke like that, at home, they would have thrown me out."

[brennvin]

That tracks, probably, from Astrid’s admittedly very limited idea of what noble life might’ve been like. All she knows is that Vega’s got a Lady in front of her name and that implies some things; at least based on those bodice-ripper books her best friend had summarised for her.

“Is it all, like,” she waves an airy hand, trying to encompass upper-class Tevinter society in a gesture, “use the right fruit spoon for scooping out the fruit and the right knife for buttering bread and use very nice language and go on polite walks around the room?”

[succise]

"Yes," she says, unsure of whether or not to be offended. Astrid does seem to be asking out of curiousity though and Vega has had the rest of the akvavit; perhaps, because she has tasted Astrid's culture, Vega now must describe the flavour of her own upbringing to make it fair.

She dabs at an invisible something near her mouth with fingertips. Whenever the bonfire tries to blow smoke in her direction she has to lean her body around the plume.

"But worse. Because you're only doing it for something in return and sometimes you don't get anything. It wastes your time."

[brennvin]

It truly doesn’t sound good, and Astrid’s nose crinkles in distaste. Vega’s words are withering enough, too, that it seems the other woman isn’t exactly homesick.

“So why’d you leave?” she asks, impulsive. They’ve been out in the woods together, Vega has suffered Astrid’s cheerful chattering on the road, they’ve bunked together in the rubble, but she can’t remember ever actually asking this before. “Tired of ’em wasting your time with fruit spoons?”

There’s such variety in what brings people to Riftwatch: some under duress, some of their own volition, and she’s suddenly very interested to figure out which one Lady Arany is.

griffons

[laruetheday]

Clarisse is at the party. That much can be said.

And, honestly, it's not like she's moping around. She seems mostly pretty normal, has been carrying a drink around and refilling it from time to time, nodding her head to the music. She is even laughing at things that are funny, and smiling when it's appropriate, and talking to people. But as soon as she's not actively engaged with something, she gets this look on her face, like she's not sure why she's here or what she should be doing. Sort of lost.

At one point she starts wandering down the beach, not for any particular reason, just to walk. And to kick rocks. When she comes upon Potato (and Astrid, underneath her), she pauses to watch for a minute, taking in the harness and the fetch items scattered around.

"Are you working or messing around right now?" No judgment. She's just curious.

[brennvin]

“Can it be both?” Astrid asks, a little muffled from somewhere beneath the griffon. She levers one of Potato’s wings out of the way, lifting it so she can peer out from a faceful of feathers and look at Clarisse.

She’s seen Clarisse downbeat at a party before, but there’s something else to it now that she can’t quite put her finger on; as if in stepping away from the fire and the music and the bigger group of people, something in the other woman’s face has slipped.

For her part, Astrid tonight seems unruffled and cheerful as ever. This is a day, the same as any other day.

“Since there’s more distractions around, I figured it’d be a good way to train her to be around crowds, like, but I’m startin’ to think someone let her cuddle too much when she was little. She doesn’t get that she’s too big for laps now.” Potato clacks her beak as if in affirmation. “You wanna help me or hang out?”

Or both.

[laruetheday]

Oh, right. Clarisse gets it. Like training a service dog, kind of—expose them to all kinds of different distractions so they don't go nuts if they happen to fly past a beach party at some point in the future. It makes sense.

"Still pretty dedicated considering it's supposed to be a party," she says, but without much bite. She even whistles to try and get Potato to hop up from the spot where she's crushing Astrid. See? Helping.

For a second she thinks about telling Astrid that if she likes working with the griffons so much, maybe she should apply to be griffon keeper. But she can't bring herself to actually say the words out loud. It would feel like a betrayal, somehow. And she's been kind of enjoying working with the griffons and heading over to check on the horses every day. Maybe enjoying's not the right word, but it's been... comforting, in a weird way, having that routine.

[brennvin]

“What’s that thing some of you rifters say— I contain multitudes,” Astrid announces, a little proud to have remembered the turn of phrase. “Well, that and I was planning on training her a bit anyway, so when Benedict announced this party, why not.”

Clarisse’s clarion whistle cuts right through the distant music and Potato starts to scramble off Astrid, although she accidentally still leaves some of her haunches draped over the woman. This, too, is familiar: some of the hounds back home absolutely didn’t remember how big they were when they were no longer puppies, and that had been nice. Gathering some warmth in the winter months, each furry companion like a walking radiator.

“You’re good with them,” she points out, noting how Potato perks up with recognition at Clarisse’s presence. (Not Ellie, but as good as—) “I’ll have to learn how to do that whistle.”

[laruetheday]

Clarisse snorts. Has she ever said that? She doubts it. But, sure, she's heard it before, on TV or something probably. She'll let Astrid have this one.

"They're just used to me," she says, which is selling herself a bit short. She is good with them, she's just comparing herself to someone who was even better. "When I first rifted in, they gave me a temporary assignment as griffon keeper. I did it for a couple months. Then Ellie applied for it. She was always really into flying."

It tastes like metal in her mouth every time she has to use past tense when she talks about Ellie, but she's forcing herself to do it anyway. She comes closer so she can scratch Potato's chest with both hands.

[brennvin]

While Clarisse scratches Potato’s chest from the front, Astrid notices an irregularity at the back of the griffon’s neck where Potato couldn’t reach it for grooming, an old feather in the middle of moulting. She takes it with thumb and forefinger and gently pulls it off the sheath of the new feather bristling beneath it. Like combing out a dog shedding their undercoat. (Sorry, she can’t help that her main frame of reference is dogs.)

She was, Clarisse says, notably past tense. “I heard you announce her going,” Astrid says, tentative.

And she might have had a better sense of these relationships, except that her hunting trips always took her into the woods for a time. Her Riftwatch missions have sent her out at sea for a while, scouting ships with Xio; with Gwenaëlle and Loxley. She knows she’s missed details back at the Gallows, the shape of things.

“Ellie, she was your…?”

Best friend, girlfriend, those lines were so hard for a bystander to interpret sometimes.

[laruetheday]

"My girlfriend."

Clarisse has decided that it's a pretty stupid word. It sounds so casual, like it doesn't fit, considering the circumstances, the depth of everything she feels. But she doesn't have an alternative that sounds better, either.

She's not upset that Astrid didn't know. She and Ellie didn't make a big deal out of it, especially around everyone else, and Astrid's been in and out a lot since she joined up. Hard to have personal conversations when you're flying, too. All that wind in your ears.

Not sure what else to say, Clarisse keeps scratching Potato's chest. It's something to do with her hands, at least, something to focus on.

[brennvin]

“—Oh, fuck. I’m sorry.”

The words come blurting out, kneejerk instinctive condolence, and then they’re just sitting there with it.

What a weird thing. At least with death, there’s a concrete feeling, a measurable grief; you know they’re gone, you can bury them and eventually move on. Astrid’s heard rifters come and go, so presumably there’s that infinitesimal thread of hope that they’ll come back someday, but she hasn’t really encountered it much herself. Loki was a friend, briefly, but that’s not much. Clarisse is the first rifter she’s really gotten to know.

Clarisse, too, could up and vanish someday.

“Are you the ‘talk about your feelings’ kind of person or, like, ‘punch things about it’ kind or ‘let’s just avoid it please’? Because I can go with whichever.”

shots

[dissolving]

He’s been drinking already. Propped on his side, tongue loose and brow wrinkled,

"Moving rocks. Moving wood. Moving rocks’n wood." Leisure and reconstruction and a desperate need to seem useful at all times don't go together. Cedric shakes his head, laughs, "Oughta get into sculpture."

Multi-task. He salutes the shot, then tips it back.

"Delltash —" Coughing, clutching the cup. "— Where'd you find this?"

He's reaching for another.

[brennvin]

“Foraged the herbs and made it meself,” Astrid says, and there’s a thread of real pride in her voice, even if it’s kind of a horrifying concoction. Meant to be slugged down in a single quick swallow, like a punch to the jaw.

“S’a little too warm out here though. If you serve it cold, like near-freezing, then it mellows out and doesn’t taste so strong. In winter, we’d keep some bottles stored in the snow.”

She pours them another round — this is taste-testing, this is for science — and then considers Cedric’s answer. “Sculpture. You ever tried whittling? Carving.”

drinks and a salad

[dissolving]

"You and Talis, gonna keep us all drunk." Not complaining. A lone seed crunches anise-sharp under tooth. "Can't say I miss the snow. Guy at Skyhold got his tongue stuck to a canteen."

Or so the story goes. He swirls the new round under his nose to examine. Citrus and spice, and a lot of it — nose wrinkling to suppress a sneeze —

But it's good. It is. A good drink grabs the moment from you: Freezes time for all the summer heat, hands it back to you new. It's good, it's better like this; a moment. Shared. Given.

"My, uh," There's that sneeze. Cedric readjusts, "Sorry. My Captain was a hand at it, carving. Guess I never... y'know, it was his thing."

[brennvin]

“Just ‘cos it’s his thing doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” Astrid says, a blithe pronouncement. “People like to share their hobbies, y’know? Have something to bond over, or whatever. My uncle kept trying to get me into his but I was shite at reading and runes. I like to carve stuff, though, and made a few figurines but they were lost in the…”

She gestures to hunched rubble of the Gallows residential towers across the island. RIP.

“Anyway, so’s I could teach you if you wanted. Maybe not with the akvavit, alcohol and sharp blades and fine movements probably don’t go together—”

[dissolving]

His neck flops back to follow the Gallows: Half-blasted.

"Shit, I'm sorry," A common refrain across the last month. Even the ravens'll learn it. "Hard to lose a thing, when 's got a piece of you in it like that."

Does Broward have anything still to give? Didn't have much to begin with, not much wasn't shared. That's good, better - he believes that- but the candles on altars, the skeleton in its fine shroud. Her uncle's runes. Doesn't everyone want something, some memory of them left behind?

(Flames, his head hurts.)

"But I'd be grateful. Be an honour to learn from a real artist."

Something to bond over, or whatever.

[brennvin]

Astrid’s nose crinkles. “Not enough to be an artist. They’re like… I don’t know, toys? Good enough for a kid to play pretend with but no one’s going to put them on exhibit or whatever. But also, fuck that, I’d rather someone play with a carved horse and accidentally break off its leg and have fun, than have it sit on a shelf. To be looked at.”

The alcohol’s burning a hole in her chest, her stomach, but it makes the conversation pleasantly warm and fuzzy around the edges. Cedric, she reminds herself, his name was Cedric. One of the boys in Diplomacy; not a division she’s worked with much, not being her strong suit by far.

There’s a beat, a lag, before her thoughts wind back to the title he’d mentioned: “Your Captain. You were in, what, an army?”

[dissolving]

"Templars," He mumbles. "Inquisition, March. 'S armies all the way down."

Maybe it wasn't always going to be that way. The Inquisition meant different things, to different people; with its mage council, and its pilgrims, and its hope for a tighter solution. A clean end. Cedric rolls onto an elbow.

"Reckon kids care more'n collectors, anyway. Everyone remembers some toy they had," Did Astrid snap that leg? "Auntie what made it."

[brennvin]

And she goes— a little stiff, with the sudden self-consciousness of someone holding herself at right-angles while Cedric sprawls on the ground, informal.

The thane had been clear about his opinion of the Chantry (poor) and on templars specifically (worse). Astrid looks a little closer at Cedric, squinting in the firelight. He’s a nice lad; her own auntie would’ve liked him, probably, and he doesn’t look much like the bogeymen she’d heard so much about, out to get their shamans. Isn’t that always the way.

And that aquavit really does have a punch to it, loose lips, impulsive, because she just goes ahead and says it:

“We used to run you lot out of the mountains,” she muses. “I mean, not like, staking templars’ heads at the gates or anything. Just. Politely dissuadin’ you all from getting too close to the holds. Templars never liked our practices much. Spirits. Sky burials.”