faderift | Skyhold

WHO: Anyone & everyone
WHAT: Open post for business as usual around Skyhold
WHEN: The first couple weeks of Harvestmere, 9:41 (aka October)
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Please mark any necessary content warnings in thread subject lines. Also, make sure to check out the other log posts already made!

Far from the glamorous adventurous world-saving people signed up for, most of the hustle and bustle in Skyhold at present is cleaning. The Great Hall is a disaster, and crews are assigned to haul out the cracked and rotting planks fallen from the wide-open roof, and tear down the vines covering the walls. Ivy encrusts the main staircase outside and many of the fortress walls and is cleared in section while other groups assess or begin shoring up the stonework as it's revealed. There are scaffolding to build, materials to sort, crates to unload, tents to stitch together or set-up, and on and on and on, endless mundane chores vital to the survival of the organization.

When not hard at work, people cluster around fires across the courtyards. Many mingle freely, going about their business, running errands and messages, planning scouting missions, tallying up supplies, distributing or playing with the sending crystals that were found in a basement vault and which a group of mages have just today finished preparing for use. Once a good number have been passed around and the first Inquisition-wide transmission made messages start being broadcast; maybe you can help someone out.

The rebel mages and renegade templars mainly keep to themselves at opposite sides of the complex given the choice. Mages assist with healing and research and bicker amongst themselves about their options and their fate. Templars help train recruits in swordforms and basic combat techniques or spar with the more advanced and bicker amongst themselves about their options and their fate. Despite having all pledged themselves to the Inquisition, they still feel like separate factions and tension between them is palpable wherever they cross paths.

Like at meals, or the communal message board in the courtyard, or at the Herald's Rest. The mess hall/tavern is so new it still smells of sawdust, and its stock has been limited to one type of strong ale until today, when a shipment of West Hill brandy has finally arrived. The mood in the place is convivial in celebration of that, but there's still plenty of muttering, especially as the night drags on and the discontented get further into their cups.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It feels like more than a name, that. Something much like a spirit. I'm Compassion. I'm Justice. I'm a test, I'm a shield, I'm a promise. But he had weight and he didn't seem like a spirit healer- he didn't seem to have magic at all. Curious.

"I made it break- I was not paying attention." Her faults are never something she'll rest on someone else's shoulders. "There is nothing to apologize for."

A question of needing something- certainty? That would help a great deal. Faith. Reassurance that this is the right path beyond what Compassion asked of her.

They are a little closer, now, and he can sense what lies beneath the silk: a stone, rough and cracked, held together in part by the knot stronger than steel.

There is the touch of something beyond the magic, the little spirits that whisper around her hand, slipping in and out of the Fade. Somewhere, there is a Guide, a voice that bid her to go where she might not otherwise.

In other words, a spirit.

"You came here with a lot of mages," he notes. "You want to watch them. Be the hand that holds."

Well that- well. She's been seen with them often enough since they arrived. The nervous apprentices, the children that grind the herbs for her poultices and are quick to quiet a laugh. Tense around templars- more so than most mages.

"Apprentices, mostly. My students." They hadn't all been before but- whoever had been teaching them were in the wind or in the ground. She is all they have and they all that keep her centered on some days. Minding them keeps her from having to mind herself. "Like everyone else they are afraid, I do what I can."

I do what I can. There's something in there that hooks and snags. Cole looks over to one side, at nothing in particular, his tone becoming a murmured recitation:

"Couldn't do enough, when everything slipped and spun out of control. Templars took everything, too easily turned against us. Too many made to kill."

Startled, the web in her palm splinters, shatters, focus lost completely as old fears and old guilt spin out in the morning air like so much blood from a wound.

"How did you-" Demon, she thinks, but he is not tempting her, taunting her. Not promising anything.

One shoulder angles toward her, the other away, as if he's been lightly pushed. Demon. He knows, by now, that most people use the word without knowing what it means. Sometimes it still strikes him... but it doesn't stop him.

"You've been scared, too. Like everyone." She said it herself. "No one to hold you, but... not alone." She has her own spirit companion already... she shouldn't be so sad.

"They care for everyone. That means you, too."

'I'm Cole' he'd said. Like a simple truth, an answer to who and what and how he was. Demons aren't so certain, aren't so pure. Too much of humanity in them was the theory but Adelaide has never had enough desire or opportunity to study the differences. She has Compassion, they were enough.

"I- you can hear them?" That was rare- other mages can, yes, but. He did not seem much like a mage. Fear and guilt, frustration and bitterness, she felt and hammered down and away to be used another time or not at all. They want her to be kind and- she tries. It's not easy.

"Not right now," he admits, while his hands play idly with one another in front of his chest. "They're quiet, silently searching. There's — a lot to be done. So many people to help. But they see you. Have they never said?"

"I would imagine they do?" It shouldn't be a question but this entire conversation has gone slightly to the left of what she expected awhile ago. "As we work together to help people."

See her? It can't be so literal as that, Truly?

"Yes." They do work together, and helping others always has to come first. Maybe that's why she doesn't think about it.

"Putting yourselves ahead of the others, and behind. They stand behind you, hands over your hands, whispers through your heart. They want to help you, too."

They see you. See her troubles, her worries, her fears. They would soothe them, too, if they could.

"They do. I wouldn't be able to do half of the work needed without them- but...That is not what you mean, is it?" Compassion helps, Compassion has always helped but more than the healing and the minding they have ever been a constant source of certainty in an otherwise uncertain time.

What more could she ask of them? She couldn't. What they had they needed for every other cut and bruise and pitch of sorrow in the hold.

He shakes his head. No, it isn't what he meant.

But maybe it doesn't work that way. Maybe they can't help her get exactly what she needs because they are so busy helping her do the same for everyone else.

He offers her a small smile. He has more work to do — so does she. For now.

"I'm glad you're here."

There's a breath of wind through the cracks on the stones

Skyhold

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