heaven, a gateway, a hope

[byblow]

WHO: Grey Wardens & You
WHAT: A daring and not at all ragtag group of Grey Wardens has walked all the way across Orlais to inform the Inquisition--just in case it hadn't already realized on its own--that everything is terrible.
WHEN: Harvestmere 22
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: This post has: (1) A single group "we just got here, we're freezing, who is in charge, what do you mean you haven't decided yet" starter that we'd like to keep to one chronological thread. (2) Open starters for individual Wardens set later in the day/week.

OOC Note: Regarding the first starter--threadjack away! Anyone is welcome to wander onto the scene to see what's going on and wander back out at their leisure, to fall silent for a while, etc. No tagging order. But let slower taggers get a word in edgewise!

Comments

battlements

[mythalenaste]

Is that shem humming a tune she knows? She's not sure where she's heard it. At a guess, something Gavin brought back after one of his forays into civilization. But it doesn't seem like one of those. Gavin tended to bring back pretty gifts rather than songs of the sort Pel would bother remembering. Wherever it's from, she hums along as he passes by, a soft, unpolished timbre in unthinking harmony. She certainly doesn't intend him to hear, but she's loud enough for it. She tugs her shawl closer around her shoulders, head bare to the wind despite the chill, sitting between two ramparts and watching the gloaming light.

[byblow]

She's better at it than he is--he's approximately on-tune, nothing wince-worthy, but also nothing admirable--and the harmony makes him sound better, too, for the whole three or four notes it takes for him to realize he has company and accompaniment. When he does he stops, startled.

At least she isn't a fire trap; he'd have walked into her just as blindly if she were.

He notices the hair first, then the ears, and decides with the benefit of hindsight that of course someone sitting on the ramparts and humming in harmony with strangers would be an elf.

"Not thinking of jumping, I hope," he says, stepping over to lean through an adjacent crenel and peer down the dark mountainside. He assumes she is not thinking of jumping, but the mood around here is quite grim--which, coming from someone who's just left a fortress full of people who think they're about to turn into ghouls planning a suicide march into the depths, is saying something. "I know things look bad right now, but they've got brandy for that."

tw: suicide

[mythalenaste]

There is a slight, helpless widening of her eyes. And then, the nausea hits.

He had to say that.

Chest tight, trying to breathe through completely unnecessary panic, she peels herself from the stone and steps away from the edge. Hardly a sound comes from her, mouth open to take silent breaths as she blinks away the vision of herself plummeting, rope rippling as it unwinds above her--

It's imagination, not flashback, but it's very uncomfortable and she has to prop herself up with one hand as she bends over in case she spews.

He's ignorant, there's no way he could have known, but she's pissed because now she has to deal with this bullshit from her own mind. So she starts growling elven curses under her breath, a nice and cathartic mantra to ground herself until the nausea passes.

Nobody ever made jokes like that back home. Nobody dared.

[byblow]

"Riiight," Alistair says. That might sound insensitive, too, but it's quiet, subdued, spoken to himself rather than to her--more obvious by contrast when he raises his voice a notch and extracts himself from his crenel to focus on hers. "That was obviously the wrong thing to say."

He raises a hand toward her back, curved forward over the wall, but stops short of touching her. He's not an idiot. He'd just like to be prepared if she does pitch forward.

[mythalenaste]

She can feel the warmth of his hand anyway, or imagines she does. She wants Merrick. She wants to hold him and promise herself that he's safe. She's safe. She is safe, though, in a world where something like that is a joke and only outliers don't find it funny.

She wipes a small tear away from one cheek with the rolled hem of her sleeve.

"Where did you hear that song?" she asks faintly. Better thing to move on to than, um, anything else they could possibly move on to.

[byblow]

Alistair hesitates--hand still hovering, not fully convinced that she isn't going to cry more or curse more or fall, or that there isn't something wrong with her beyond upset over an ill-considered joke--but then says, "Grey Wardens," so as not to be rude. Ruder.

He lowers his hand, tentatively, and eases a half-step back from her to lean his shoulder on the merlon.

"Are you all right? I'm sorry for--"

He's not sure what he did, exactly, but he's sorry for it. They can move on more completely after that's established.

[mythalenaste]

"No." Spoken like she's cutting him off from that train of guilty thought. "It wasn't your fault. Someone in our clan died that way. You couldn't have known."

She's now as distant and businesslike as you please, though she softens it with a little smile, a gesture of goodwill. She is collected, but still searching for--

Her mouth forms a little O.

"That song." The threads start coming together now, and she frowns thoughtfully. "That song...I heard it while I was visiting another clan. A few of them had the Blight, and I was doing chores round the camp till..." Till the patients died, and their caretakers could go back to work. No need to say all that. "One of the patients was singing it. Quietly, to himself. It was so beautiful. I could never remember it after."

[byblow]

Beautiful--well, maybe that's fair. If it meant something else, and if it hadn't been constantly playing in his head for months now, Alistair would probably agree. But it has been, and he knows what it means, so it takes him a moment to muster: "It is pretty."

The wind picks up. He's a hardy man, but he still shivers, for a moment, while he tries to decide whether she's as all right as she claims. He doesn't want to upset her further.

"They say it's the sound of the Old Gods calling the darkspawn to find them," he says. He thinks she's all right. And this isn't a secret--or at least nor more of a secret than half of the things he's already broken oaths to share with various people in the last twenty-four hours. "Puts a bit of a damper on the beauty, I think. But it can get stuck in your head something awful."

[mythalenaste]

A skeptical half-smile.

"A rumor started by the song's composer, I don't doubt. Nothing like a bit of infamy to spread your fame about. Still. It is very lovely. It made me think of the Fall of Arlathan."

[byblow]

He'll take even a skeptical smile over the elven cursing and the sense that he's done something terribly wrong. It's even enough to stay the impulse to prove himself right--that and the fact that he doesn't really want to think about the Calling more than he already has to.

So he smiles back. "And that doesn't put a damper on anything."

[mythalenaste]

Her lips part in a faint grin.

"I wasn't there. Maybe it'd put a damper on it if I was. I'm Dalish. Most Dalish see the loss of our glory days as some heartbreakingly beautiful and climactic stanza of an epic poem. That's the only reference we have. I imagine we'd find it a lot less beautiful if we knew how it actually went. If I ever find evidence to debunk our insistent myth that the ancient elves were immortal, I'll cry with joy."

[byblow]

"I once met a Dalish who'd been alive for centuries," Alistair says. This is not actually the opposite of what she's hoping for: "His people told us he'd rediscovered the secret of immortality. But it turned out he'd done some sort of blood curse, and he died when he broke it."

So not what she is hoping for, either. But topical.

[mythalenaste]

"Something like that sounds more likely." She sits back down in one crenel and pulls her feet up under her long shawl. "Was it that Zathrian? I never met him myself, but he was something of a celebrity every Arlathvhen."

[byblow]

"That's the one," Alistair says. "Bald fellow. Very severe—with us, anyway. Maybe he was peppier when there weren't plagues and Blights and humans stomping all around his camp."

Alistair doubts it. But it seems kinder not to judge someone who died doing the right thing, and who he did really only know during particularly dire circumstances.

"We did have an elf along, but he was—" This pause is utterly unnecessary, as he already knows how to describe Zevran both politely and not, but he attempts to draw it out anyway, until the wind shifts direction to whistle through stone and the sound is too familiar for comfort. "—Antivan."

[mythalenaste]

"There's an Antivan elf who joined the Inquisition," Pel says absent-mindedly. "An entertainer. I thought he was quite charming."

[byblow]

"That was just the accent, I guarantee it," he says. "That's how they get you. The accent distracts from all the knives."

Perhaps Alistair should know they're talking about the same charming Antivan elf, but he's thrown off the scent--for now--by entertainer.

"My Antivan elf is here, too." Yes, his. "If we have two Antivan elves going around charming people--maybe I should post a warning."

[mythalenaste]

"The accent is rather exotic." Pel can't resist the smile coming to her face. "My taste doesn't normally run so...slight."

An elf who is hardly ever attracted to elves.

"I'm...sorry, did I miss your name?"

[byblow]

At first, when she mentions her taste, Alistair brightens like he's been handed a gift--maybe that isn't visible in the dark, maybe it is--and he's on the verge of delivering a line, in his particular I'm only serious if you want me to be and if you don't want me to be you're welcome to hit me way.

But then: his name. Right.

"I hope not. It hasn't been gone very long."

She's still allowed to hit him. His grin is both proud and self-aware: he knows he's the worst. He also knows it's usually sort of endearing.

"It's Alistair," he offers, without making her work for it. If he's lucky, she's never heard of him. He doesn't leave time for her to say so if she has. "Yours?"

[mythalenaste]

A stronger smile at the joke. It is definitely endearing.

"Pel."

She may have heard of an Alistair once, but for all she knows, it's a common name.

[byblow]

Very common. Definitely common. Dalish are the best.

"Pel is a good name," he says. "Simple and straight to the point, but not too... pointy." She knows what he means, he hopes. He's not sure he does. He's been running off very little sleep for a very long time--or that's the excuse he'll give, anyway, if he needs to pretend awkwardness and bad jokes aren't just his standard fare.

[mythalenaste]

Not to pointy? Is he referring to her ears? Or to the point, but not too heavy-handed?

"Not too pretentious, you mean?" she guesses.

[byblow]

"Not too sharp," Alistair says. "Or--blunt."

This is not going well for him.

"It's soft," he decides on after a moment. "I guess most elven names are. But it suits you." Sort of. Maybe. He hardly knows her. But her hair is nice.

Maker.

"I'm sorry. I'm very tired."

[mythalenaste]

Soft? Pel has hardly ever felt soft. She always wanted to be soft and pretty, like Ellana, but there was never time for it as Keeper's First. Sharp and blunt have been her tools for a long time, but certain types of people seem to bring out something else. Alistair is that type of person. Alistair babbles, and Pel has always been exceptionally comforted by people who babble. Not chatter--that's talking without having anything to say. Babble is more nervous. It means he respects her enough to care what she thinks of him, but has so much personality that it bubbles out regardless. It also makes someone unlikely to lie.

She smiles at him.

"What does Alistair mean?"

[byblow]

"Fun and unlucky," Alistair says. "Prophetic, really."

He's lying, and not well, but that's what she gets for encouraging him. (Smiling counts as encouragement.) He relents without prompting, though. That might be as grown-up as he'll ever get: following up his jokes and sarcasm with real answers without making anyone pry them out of him first.

"I don't know. I don't think anyone picked it for its meaning. Closed their eyes and pointed at a page in a book, more likely." Who even named him? Maric? Eamon? He hopes it was Eamon. "Does yours mean something?"

[mythalenaste]

She shakes her head. "I think it's just a sound they liked. They named my brother Kim, it doesn't mean anything either. They don't really even sound elven, the consonants are too hard. I never managed to ask them where they got them."