[OPEN] - Ain't seen the sunshine since I don't know when.

[laurenande]

WHO: Galadriel and Various
WHAT: Galadriel before her arrest, for those who would like CR before this Civil War plot is underway, her being arrested, and Galadriel in the cells for anyone who wants to come visit her or attempt to break her out. This post is super, duper open to anyone who wants to tag in. Please, have at.
WHEN: Late Guardian to early Drakonis.
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: No warnings yet, but have a link to the IC thread that happens amid all this: Cassandra interrogates Galadriel.

Pre-Interrogation/Arrest Prompts.

The Emprise du Lion was a dreadful place, and spending more than a fortnight within its borders had taken a toll on Galadriel. She arrived back in Skyhold only a few days before her conversation with Seeker Pentaghast, and she spent them taking what rest she could find. Sleep did not come easily to her, even at the best of times, so it was hardly a surprise that she spent long hours in the peace of the garden, watching the horizon on the battlements, or embroidering in the Rotunda.

(OOC: The above is the State of Galadriel, it's mostly for those who want to do something I haven't included, but it applies to the below as well. If you'd like to use a prompt for a specific scene, there are several options below to choose from. If the prompts don't appeal, please feel free (and encouraged) to write up any scenario you'd like, anywhere around Skyhold.)



Garden -

The winter chill that crept through the fortress was not as biting nor as pervasive as the wind outside the walls. There was something dull about the cold in Skyhold, something muted and gentle, but it was a feeling too fleeting for her to place. The sun chased the cold away just after dawn. Though the air was not warmed by the sun, the plants in the garden stretched toward it, green and vibrant as spring itself.

She adored spring and lingered for long hours in the gardens, relishing the sunlight that crested over the mountains. She spent each morning in the garden, watching the distant rise of the sun before tending to the plants. There were others who trickled in, as dawn passed and the fortress awoke, and she would leave the plants to them as they began their tasks, but she enjoyed the peace and stillness while she could.

The Emprise had been a grating, awful place but new growth and tender green leaves made her glad. More than once she found herself singing as she worked, and the plants grew quickly under her care. In only a few days, the grass would be renewed and the first small buds would open. She was thousands of years old and yet, despite that, she could hardly wait.



Courtyard -

Galadriel had not taken stock of the yard after the rift had closed. At the time, there had been more pressing matters to attend to, and she hadn't the patience to wait and search for subtle things. Now, without anything to pull her attention elsewhere, she devoted time to examining where the rift had split the veil.

Skyhold was a place with many curious sights to behold. The Orlesian nobility who visited the fortress were bedecked in feathers and quills atop gilded silk and stiff, polished leather. There were dwarves who quietly skirted the sunlight whenever they darted out of the fortress to their carts; their relief as they dove back to the keep was palpable. There were even a few humans clad in mud and fur who insisted on carrying goats. Truly, she was not so strange a sight that she merited recognition, standing in the courtyard with her staff in hand, simply peering at a space in the air. That she stood in place for hours on end, without moving a hair, was barely worthy of note.

The crowd moved and bustled around her readily enough, as though she were simply a fixture of the fortress, and she was glad for their disregard. A few mages slowed as they passed her, but they did not stop to speak. They would regard her oddly (a few of them frowned) and then they hurried away to see to their tasks. They were gifted mages, Galadriel noted silently; the majority of people who walked past her could not sense the slow current of power that rose against the veil. Those who could feel the pull of magic seemed disoriented by it, particularly when she shifted it or allowed it to ebb, but her study did them no harm.

If it had, she would have refrained from such tests in Skyhold.


Rotunda -

Galadriel's notes were artful and fluid things; they were not terribly numerous, but her time in Thedas had generated a few dozen pages of them. She hid none of them when she left the fortress, though she tidied them and tucked them out of the way when they were not in use. When she was using her notes, as she was now, she spread them out over the table as one would spread a map.

The unfamiliar letters of the tengwar curled over the sheets of cast-off vellum and pages of pressed pulp; when they were set side by side they were more drawing than words. She added to them as she read, writing between the older lines of text with habitual ease. Occasionally, amid the layers of tengwar, a word in the trade tongue appeared, but they rarely gave much clarity to the text around them.

It was early afternoon when she took over the space in the rotunda again. She had gathered a few clean pages and carefully written out the whole of the tengwar. She had promised to teach Sina these letters, and she intended to extend that invitation to all the elves of Thedas, but teaching required patience and materials. It had been centuries since she had last instructed anyone in their letters, but the memories were so fond, so filled with delight, that she couldn't repress her smile as she sat and carefully created a chart.

She could have stopped after writing them out, she supposed, but drawing the pictures that accompanied the letters was half of the entertainment of it. Sina was too old to need tales of lamps and ships and golden treasure to learn letters, and Galadriel did not need them to teach this lesson, but needing and wanting were very different things. In this instance, she wanted them and there was no reason to refrain.





Galadriel being escorted to the cells.


Courtyard - Under Arrest.

Galadriel rarely used her height to intimidate - it was cruel and largely ineffective - but she had drawn herself to her full height as she stared down Cassandra. The guards had not offended her so direly, but as they took her by her arms and lead her down the stairs and into the courtyard, she gave them no quarter. They were wary of her, as well they should have been, and she towered over them like a great looming shadow.

Her expression was rigid and thunderous, filled to the brim with deep, consuming fury masked only by the cold veneer of disdain. She walked with sweeping grace, despite the indignity of her situation, and the guards that led her avoided her gaze as they opened the door to the cells. They had made a spectacle of her and it was another slight she would not forget.





In the cells.


Day -

The cells were barred, with heavy iron gates and thick, artless locks. The stone of the chamber was crumbling, despite the efforts to reinforce the mortar and the floor. Half of the cells were unusable, collapsed or filled with rubble, and the other half were bare things, small and littered with chunks of rock and dried hay. The only objects that had been placed intentionally within the cells were a threadbare, unclean bedroll and a wooden bucket.

The chill that moved through the fortress was keenest here. Wind cut beneath the far door and the torchlight twisted wildly in the drafts. The single fire that burned in the middle of the room was barely sufficient to heat it; the brazier that held the fire was large, but it was unshielded and not well fitted to its current use. The two guards who had accompanied her devoted the majority of their attention to keeping the brazier lit. Between the bare nature of her cell and the build of the room, it became very clear how the people of Thedas dealt with captives.

Galadriel rarely lauded Mirkwood for its splendor, but her current trappings made even Thranduil's deepest, darkest cells seem kingly.


Night -

Twilight was an ordeal in these cells, one that dragged on for far longer than it had any right to. The cells that had collapsed and were open to the sky leaked grey light for hours; when they finally darkened, the far door lit the room in much the same way. Eventually, when the sun finally dropped away, a deep darkness settled over the room. The guards were attentive, but the night was cold and she unnerved them in the dark. They stood farther from her, behind the pillars that lined the walkway, and spoke only in hushed tones.

The fire required less attention at night, but without the wind threatening to extinguish it, the guards stoked it far less frequently. It burned low, dancing red and orange in the darkness, and Galadriel was left with the option to watch it or sleep. She chose to watch.

Comments

[laurenande]

Araceli's voice was familiar, it had not been long since their last conversation, but hers was not a voice Galadriel expected to hear. They did not know each other so well that she would have expected, or even imagined a visit from her. It was curious and that curiosity granted Araceli all of Galadriel's attention when she finally approached the bars.

It was unfortunate that curiosity came with an expression so open and earnest. The shift in Galadriel's mood, as Araceli cast nameless blame on her, was exceedingly obvious. The politesse and calm in Galadriel's face ebbed away, receding like waves on the sand. Beneath her serenity laid a stony, unforgiving hardness; as diaphonous as her gown and her hair were, even they became severe and steely. The change in Galadriel was subtle, none of her features moved, save perhaps for a narrowing of her eyes, but the shadows around the two women grew darker, deeper, and the bland cold of the cells became a biting chill.

Araceli had been kind, she was generous and conversational. It was only by dint of those facts that Galadriel restrained herself.

"Tread lightly," Galadriel warned icily. "The extent of my patience has already been tested. When it is finally depleted, what I may have done will be the least of your concerns. I do not easily forget those who disparage my name and my honor."

[foxsays]

Perhaps in light of her training she should be practicing, keeping her face blank, keeping calm but it all feels like it’s slipping through her fingers, that she can’t catch it and the more she grabs, the more that spills free. She pulls her coat tighter against the cold, glancing briefly at her marked left hand before she tucks it under the arm, out of sight.

It's one of the last things she wants to look at right now.

In a way only the young can, she rolls her eyes, swinging her weight onto one hip so that the rapiers the guards left to her rattle quietly. "But it is not only your name, your honour, is it?" She retorts, jaw set. "We are marked the same and there are some of as at least that are aware of how far a shadow can be cast, of what happens when the many are judged by the actions of the few."

Paraphrasing Marcel seems the wisest way to go when he summed it up so well during their mutual dinner with Alayre, an anxious knot that has sat in her belly like a great anchor dragging her down, the line taut and her with no knife. Selfishness comes easily to a person where following your own heart is encouraged, so long as no others are harmed along the way but she has been taught to think as one, to move as one with five others. Besides, a captain's daughter remembers how a crew might as well be one living and breathing thing along with their ship.

"Whatever echoes there are when a man or woman makes threats in a cell, that is all that they are; echoes, nothing more," she says though she does keep her tone light. More flies with honey than with vinegar, silk over steel, all the things she's grown up knowing. "The walls in Skyhold have ears after all."

[laurenande]

This girl swung her weight around, shifting as she projected sentiments and words beyond her ken. She was patronizing her, every sentiment was the sort heaped on children, used to scold and reprimand, and Galadriel's hard stare maintained throughout the whole of it. If Araceli's words had a purpose, Galadriel could not parse them and her expression became more grim as she stared through the iron bars at the woman on the other side.

"How eager you are to spill your own blood upon these stones," Galadriel uttered, dark and foreboding as the shadows drew longer. "Do not chide me, child; I know more of mortal consequences than you could ever dream."

She stepped forward. The bars were not far but she had kept back from them because she disliked the feel of an iron cage. Now, as she stretched her marked hand toward the bars, they creaked loudly and rattled where they were set into the stone. The guards, only a short distance away, were silent, as was the fire. It was almost as if the two of them were contained in a circle, as if the stretch of shadows and sound tapered off to nothing.

"We are not the same, you and I," Galadriel seethed and the bars groaned and shuddered as her hand stretched through them. At once it seemed as though the iron was trying to twist away from her, as though it strained to escape her reach, and the torchlight above them flickered wildly overhead. "The threats I make echo at my behest, as near or far as I desire. The cage that keeps me is of little consequence."

[foxsays]

Bravado only carries a person so far, it would seem; it's seen her through tavern brawls, through guards racing after her in the dark over rooftops and along narrow rope bridges, even the times when fellow thieves have turned on her and having to keep moving with a lead shot in her, when every breath had burned. Thedas has unveiled horrors she couldn't imagine in the form of demons, Red Templars, spirits, her body not being entirely her own anymore, blood magic and golems of flesh.

Had it not been for the shadows she might have been able to salvage something though she has doubts she wouldn't admit. There are similar words spoken before duels in the streets or the promenades but there's something more here, something that goes deep in the marrow of her bones leaving her feeling as if she's been plunged beneath icy waters, unable to take a breath. Stepping back, though it's more like scurrying, her usual swaggering gait failing her, she gets her hands on the hilts of her rapiers, gripping hard until they mark her palms. She lets go only to wipe her sweaty palms on her trousers, swallowing back bile as her stomach lurches uneasily.

"What are you?" She manages at last but her voice is much smaller than she would like it to be and she has to swallow a few times to get it to work, barely above a whisper. Still her heart pounds like it had when the terror demon had shrieked in her face with those long gnarled claws outstretched, and when the despair demon had refused to die even as she'd stabbed it. She can't make herself ask who, not after that, not when the sound of the iron echoed in her head. That the guards aren't moving has her frightened, the guards should be the first ones moving as her eyes sting.

Again, she finds her voice once she's angrily brushed away her tears (if they're from anger or fear even she can't tell), though it doesn't sound near as sure as she wishes it would. "You came through a rift, same as I did, same as others did. That is what matters to them." And that's what she fears too. That Sina will be singled out for being an elven mage with a strange mark that could have caused so much harm. That the cells and punishment will await all of them so marked; it's easy to judge the many by the deeds of the few if the deeds cause harm.

A thief knows when even one set of eyes is upon her, a guard learns to see threats and dangers before they ever come to pass, and right now when she's so keenly aware that she doesn't belong and that it's so easy to spot her, it's a bad combination.

[laurenande]

'What are you?' she asked, as though such a question merited an answer.

Galadriel's eyes narrowed as Araceli babbled, as she tried to twist the blame for the situation, as she attempted to establish some rapport as she wept with fear. This girl was barely more than a child, even by the standards of Men, and yet the fact that she'd survived, even to this age, was miraculous. Either she was clever and hot-headed, or an utter fool, and neither endeared her to Galadriel.

"I care not for what matters to them; if they cannot see how we differ, they are blind."

Galadriel twisted her hand and the oppressive atmosphere around them came to a head. All at once the shadows became black as pitch, solid and suffocating, but the force of them was instant and resounded, like the ringing of a bell. As they waned, as the shadows thinned and faded, the room remained in darkness. The torches along the wall, even the brazier in the center of the room, were extinguished, snuffed so utterly that even their coals failed to glitter in the dark. From the brazier smoke rose thin and ashen toward the crumbling roof.

With the passing of the shadows, sound came flooding back. Their concealment was ended and the guards, startled by the sudden burst of wind--for it had to be wind that put out the lights--set about finding their weapons and searching for flint and tinder to strike kindle some flame. Galadriel's gaze was still locked on Araceli and, without words, she whispered into the girl's mind.
You are a foolish girl.

Go from here.

Leave me at once.