We must resist

[arcaneadvisor]

WHO: Morrigan; open
WHAT: Checking in on friends, checking in on the mage and rifter situation and research. Wildcard and shapeshifter lesson discussions available!
WHEN: Post-rift opening in Skyhold onwards, basically a big catch-all
WHERE: All over Skyhold
NOTES:A few so please bear with me:
1) Morrigan is seeking out rifters since what happened to Sina, there’s a starter just for them
2) For the same reasons she’s seeking out members of the mage council
3) If you’re interested in shapeshifter lessons, there’s a handy sticky post here
4) The research Morrigan is doing is based on the Hinterlands expedition here

Library - artifact research;
Since returning from the Hinterlands, she’s devoted more time to the artifact that had returned with them, or rather to the notes that had been made about the surroundings. It makes a change to reading the book on the Veilfire runs and making her own notes from what Pel had directed her to, taking her deeper into history, into Avvar culture and Ferelden legends for a change. Each time Flemeth is mentioned she makes what might be a grimace or might be a smile.

Spread across the table are copious notes taken in the Hinterlands, including sketches of the artifact, as well as a symbol drawn on the floor in the ruin, a few more of the strange statues, the piles of bones.

Another perspective would be welcome, as would a distraction in all honesty.

Gardens;
Instead of the usual peace, Skyhold's garden is a battle.  Not a serious one to most but to the children playing Wardens and Darkspawn it's very much real, shrieking and lunging, hacking and slashing with swords.  One little boy holds Morrigan's attention more than the others; this is a rare moment of peace, when things have been on edge lately.  As it is, she's kneeling, planting the seeds she brought with her, a few she's carried around since she left the Wilds, others brought with her from Orlais and beyond.  Simple, quiet work, no devious plans some might think she has, just a break from researching out in the fresh air. 

And no, contrary to what some might have you believe, not a single one of the seeds will grow into something poisonous.

Seeking rifters;
She's met a rifter or two since she came to Skyhold, and talk of them has been everywhere but hunting them down to talk was never a priority until the rift had opened within the very walls.  Now?  Well she has theories, theories she cannot test herself but looking for them might help, and it's a different sort of magic, something new to draw her attention when not working on whatever scraps of elven lore they've uncovered thus far.

Wherever the rifters might be, she seeks them out eventually, appearing around a corner seemingly from nowhere, perhaps after a particularly intent crow or cat has watched them before disappearing.  The introduction is the same each time, for she only knows one or two in passing.

"Greetings, you may call me Morrigan.  I wonder, might you have the time to talk a while?"

Seeking the mage council;
That they've made a little Circle themselves here is still a notion that disquiets her, something that she keeps an eye on without joining in, unwilling to be held to whatever rules they've made but it wasn't just anyone who opened a rift in Skyhold.  It was a native, a native mage and when she arrived in the first instance it was after an Abomination rampaged.  It hardly helps matters that she's Dalish as well.

There are too many Templars here for her liking as it stands, unsure of what reprisals there might be.  So she waits, quiet and patient, seeking Adelaide LeBlanc in particular simply because they've spoken before but it is opinions she is after, a sense of how things truly lie.  She's lingered before, to watch, to listen, to judge silently and she never could abide things being caged.

wildcard;
[Or feel free to find Morrigan elsewhere!]

Comments

[byblow]

Alistair nods, and nods again; he might be surprised by Morrigan's maternal instincts, but he doesn't doubt them. And he doesn't have any designs on sending out belated birth announcements, either. (Though that's a funny thought. Dear Uncle Teagan...) It's a promise as much as a warning. He hasn't told anyone, and he won't now. Anyone who puts her boy at risk won't be coming on Alistair's account.

The bit about griffons makes him smile, though, and the smile fades to something rueful and uncertain but doesn't disappear when she frames the story that way—the only two, the only chance. Discomfort and dissatisfaction. Alistair is first in line to deny he's any sort of hero, even without a capital H. But he can tell stories, sure. He likes telling the ones about Shale and Zevran and Wynne and Leliana and Oghren. He might even know one or two about Morrigan that aren't awful, if he thinks hard enough.

"I'll stay and talk to him next time he comes 'round to see Zevran," he says. He's been slipping away, Suddenly Busy, whenever Kieran might appear. But he can stop. He can ask to see his toys. Alistair finally grew out of having his own, but he still knows what to do with them. "I'll try not to say anything bad about you. It will be a struggle, of course—I'm sure you understand—but I think I can manage it. Maybe if I step away first to get it all out of my system where he can't hear."

He's mostly joking.

[arcaneadvisor]

If there is a birth announcment to be sent, perhaps send it to Eamonn. She'll deliver it herself and watch as he chokes himself to death on his impotent rage before returning. At least his funeral will be a small affair where few need bother themselves.

"Alistair," she pauses, taking a breath to think of how to phrase this because she will never ask something of him, and she will never look weak but he does need to understand what it is he perhaps makes light of. "I have gone to great lengths to keep my own life casting a shadow over his." Don't undo a lifetime of hard work when she hasn't said anything terrible about you, when for once she has told stories the way Leliana had without ripping them to pieces unless she's been teaching Kieran the parts of history he's found so he can start to understand how the world works, why certain things are the way that they are no matter how unfair it might seem.

Some things - many of them terrible - she can joke about. But selfish as it may be, she wishes to be seen as good in her son's eyes, as someone who loves him and thinks the world of him. There are so many here who could undo it with a few words and Alistair has seen some of the very ugliest parts of her.

"I am sure Zevran will help to remind you. He is awfully fond of Kieran. Even tiny toy swords can hurt." And she would know, she's stood on enough of them but unlike Flemeth (who would never have allowed them) she doesn't make a huge fuss about it. Though she'd sincerely like to.

[byblow]

Alistair frowns at her, thrown off-balance by the lack of a return volley, but by the time she's finished talking he's smiling again. Very faintly. It's like being attacked by a wolf and following it back to its den to discover a litter, a glimpse of tenderness instead of claws—Alistair's been there, and he left the wolves alone.

"I'll tell him you saved my life," he offers, which is as close as he'll ever come to thank you, especially knowing that she didn't do any of it for him. She still did it. And some of it—especially that part at the end where they had to have sex—couldn't have been easy. "One of the less, ah, momentous times than..."

Than Kieran's conception. Alistair isn't conceited enough to think of his survival as more than a side-effect of that, in any case: it could have been Jonas, or Loghain, but Jonas brought the offer to Alistair, who wasn't a general and wasn't going to be a king. He didn't have any illusions about who would be handed the short straw with the Archdemon, if they made it far enough to face that decision.

Anyway, he doesn't finish the sentence. There's no good way to phrase it now. There certainly wouldn't be a good way to phrase it for a ten-year-old boy.

"That time with the ogre, maybe," he says instead. A whole year of fighting, and Morrigan had his back on plenty of occasions, no matter how little fondness she had for it or the rest of him. "I won't make it too scary."

[arcaneadvisor]

"Wipe that look from your face, tis most disturbing," she mutters, if only because she suspects she's somehow put it there and she doesn't like that at all. He should be making every other face under the sun when they're talking.

"Hardly." Because well, there's a guilt that comes with Kieran. Because she never planned to care, never planned to love him, and were her motives any less selfish than Flemeth's own? Does caring now make up for that fact? There won't ever be an answer, there will only be the future and doing better, trying to remain mindful of the past as she guides him so he won't know what any of them had to know, that pain and hardship, deflecting with humour as Alistair does or with a tongue sharper than a blade. "The talk after if you bring that up will be your responsibility, and you will not be allowed to confer or even have Zevran within earshot for it."

There are certainly many times to bring up though, after all how often can a man find the traps with his feet in a battle instead of letting the rogues get to work with their clever fingers.

But no, Kieran is too young to get any sort of talk like that, and he won't get the story of how he came to be until he is old enough to understand it. She can only hope he won't despise her when it comes.

"For all he has nightmares, they are seldom from tales. T'would be easier if they were, if you begin with an ogre he will only pester you for more, and to aid him in re-enactments." Surely she can procure a wooden sword for when Alistair is inevitably cast in the role of Ogre # 1.