closed | road trip

[dissolving]

WHO: Cedric & Gwen & a skull sippy cup
WHAT: Road trip!
WHEN: Vaguely after Satinalia
WHERE: Cumberland
NOTES: I'll edit as appropriate.

The Abbey's an ugly scene.

Thick walls, massed bureaucracy; some clerk dredged up to speak with her in quiet, clipped Orlesian. They cannot make promises for the Spire, but he will pass whatever papers she has brought along if she will just wait here, in the hall,

And no further. Young, robed things watch her sidelong. Older ones watch the doors, shaggy with humped muscle; eyes faded, skin worn hard for sixty. The hours pass. Some shift exchanges, a new man led out by the crook-curved arm. Armored, and not armed. Mouth turned down in dull, unhappy line.

An ugly scene. That was before the door slammed. Glass shatters, a breathless shout: "Carsus — !"

Amazing, the ground he can cover in a skirt. Commotion somewhere behind. The guard starts. Their eyes meet,

He looks like he means to say something. And then they're both out the doors.

Comments

[elegiaque]

“It isn’t going to be fun for a while,” she says, to little surprise, “but ouais— that one’s the worse, too,” the bones, with their details, their intricacy, the shading. The little nightsky on her other foot is scatter and subtler; the moons had been the worst of it, and all done much quicker, with far less returning over the same tender skin.

She leans to get a better look at what’s going on behind him.

Ruminatively, “You’re going to be sleeping on your stomach ‘til first night.”

[dissolving]

"If I smother, blame Clarisse. Told me she wants one, ages back." The tree beginning to span his back is simple, geometric, more icon than illustration as it crawls over shoulder and spine. "How'd you pick 'em?"

[elegiaque]

“Oh, no, this is all you—”

but to be fair, what she sees of it does sort of look worth all the work. The geometric shape of it makes her think of her hair-comb: geometric representation of a city elven tradition, carried with her. His, of course, a bit more intimately. Significantly more permanently. And she’s only making assumptions about the why, but it doesn’t seem so outlandish to draw a line between them,

“Mine, I guess, it’s…” Probably there’s not a way to make this sound or feel less pretentious, although she at least briefly tries to imagine what it might be. “Morrigan told me to live gloriously.” Be selfish, be wild. The world will not care for you so why should you care for the world?

“I don’t know. I feel like it’s a thing that’s just true, you know? One foot in the stars and one in the grave, this whole time.”

A part of her is always walking through Granitefell. A part of her is always looking to the stars. Maybe she’s tired of fighting different parts of herself.

[dissolving]

They're both spared skepticism of Korcari witches by the tap of needle over nerve, and a mumbled curse for someone's crypt –

He resets.

"'S beautiful," Means that much. She came to the right country for it, not so different from some of the symbols that etch these streets. The pause is slight, but it's there. Maybe it's only for invoking another name, so hot on the heels of others. Maybe it's because: "Astrid sort of reckons them the same. Guess that's not it, exactly. But the sky, y'know. Says 's where they send their folk."

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle softens in a different way, then—

“To the lady of the skies,” she agrees. “Always think of her when I see crows.” The Avvar’s lady, and not Astrid, though it’s easy enough these days to get to one from the other. A clear line towards: oh, I wonder what Astrid’s up to, a question she can more easily answer than what Aura might be, or what Asher would.

She looks down at her feet, mostly finished.

“I always remember my mother at the healer’s tents outside Skyhold,” she says, after a moment, “shaving Asher’s beard for him, so he wouldn’t go to the lady looking a fright. It was still a secret, you know? He took it with him to her for safekeeping. Much,”

injecting deliberate humour, a hint of irony,

“good that that did.”

It doesn’t really sound like she regrets the way it’s gone.