faderift | { OPEN } i'll do what it takes

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{ OPEN } i'll do what it takes

WHO: Ellana Ashara + OPEN + closed starters for some
WHAT: Catching friends up on recent events/important meetings/random day in the life stuff
WHEN: The latter part of Drakonis, and spanning the entirety of Cloudreach; for the open section, please let me know what day or week so I can keep my time lines straight?
WHERE: around Skyhold

{ open throughout cloudreach; please specify date or week in the subject header }
The new month will hopefully be a reprieve from all the chaos of the last month. Every issue has been a learning experience for her, and that is really the only positive thing she can take from most of what's happened. She's never wished to walk around with eyes closed, and yet now she realizes she must have been, because some of what's happened has certainly opened her eyes. And that's starting to change her. In order to become more worldly, she needs to be less ignorant of the world. To be the type of person who abandons hope for cynicism has no appeal to her, but moving forward she definitely will keep a closer eye on things, and allow herself a cynical thought every now and again. To survive this world, she doesn't need to completely shed who she is, but she needs to be more aware.

On the surface, she appears to be the same. She can be found in varied locations sitting with her lute and an open songbook. Her brow is often furrowed in concentration as she places her fingers on the strings and strums a few chords. Other times she sets the book aside and plays the songs she now has memorized, only tripping up once or twice. If not out with her lute, she's usually spotted with a book, and the subject could be anything: what little is known about elven ruins, books on politics and debate, and even a volume of an encyclopedia on animals, as she reads through their traits to see what would suit her needs.

If she's simply out walking, there's an inexplicable smile gracing her lips that she doesn't realize is there. It makes her look like she's daydreaming, though she's in no danger of walking into a pole. It's just the smile of someone in the throes of a new romance, and very little can erase it when she's thinking of that special someone.

{ drakonis 16th: kallian }
The two had spoken at the soiree about meeting up to perform together the next day, and Ellana sends Kallian a crystal message once she's made sure the tower she's picked is abandoned. It's not that they can't perform in front of others, as Kallian showed last night, but it would be nice to have the privacy to perfect a song and just to talk as well. Ellana's still brimming with excitement over the confession of feelings she and Felix both gave the other, and as Ellana waits for her friend with her lute sat in her lap, there's a bright smile on her face, remembering that kiss.

{ drakonis 18th: sina, beleth }
Ellana doesn't want certain people to hear about her and Felix from third parties because of how they might react. The last thing she wants is for them to think she intentionally kept this from them. However, it takes her several days after the soiree to both work up the courage and find the time. So much seems to be happening at once in Skyhold, and she needs to get into the right head space for talking about a very sensitive topic. The first she goes to find is Sina, because Ellana knows she can be more easily found. She's usually in the gardens or her tent in the gardens, so she makes her way there to look.

Once things have been discussed with Sina, Ellana needs a little break, but then goes to find Beleth. She's the one person in Clan Ashara that Ellana feels might really be against this, but it's hard to know for sure since their interests have taken them in different directions since arriving at Skyhold and they don't speak much. And that makes her harder for Ellana to track down. Finally, she pulls out her crystal and contacts her.

"Beleth? Are you busy?"

{ late drakonis: benevenuta }
Ellana's goal at the soiree had been to not allow the nobles to get away with talking down to her, and in that area, she succeeded as much as she'd been able. Her refusal to either act demure or angry had confused the lot of them, because in their narrow-minded views, an elf could only be a timid servant or an angry savage, not someone who treated nobles as average: neither as someone superior or as a threat to be eliminated.

It had satisfied Ellana, but she knows moving forward that having confidence and being able to bat away derogatory remarks is only part of what she should be doing. At the last meeting of the Mage Council, she'd been lost, and had sat in silence for the latter part of the discussion. She needs to understand how to better navigate politics, and who better than a noble to whom politics comes as second nature? She asks to meet with Benevenuta in private, and like with their mage meetings, she arranges a tea set and some snacks. It's not as well done as one of the Circle mages would have prepared it, but she's done her best.

{ early cloudreach: sam }
They had discussed metalworking over the crystals while Sam was off in Emprise and Ellana was admiring the ring he'd crafted for her back at Skyhold. He'd said he'd teach her how to make designs in metal and she'd figured why not? There are so many things she has yet to try, and he'd said they would just use scrap metal, so she isn't too concerned about being wasteful. One day she goes to look for him at the forge, the air heavy with heat and the light dim inside the armory. But there he is, and thankfully there isn't a crowd of people around either. She doesn't want to get in anyone's way while they're crafting important things.

"Hello, Sam," she greets, already fanning her face in the heat. "What are you making?"

{ late cloudreach: morrigan }
A few days after the soiree, Ellana had sat down with Morrigan and discussed if the latter would teach the former shapeshifting. Ellana had explained her reasons for wanting to learn this specialization and Morrigan agreed to it. She'd been sent off to do plenty of research on the subject, and throughout the rest of Drakonis and into the next month, Ellana had slowly made her way through the readings to get herself into the right mindset.

Now the time has finally come for the practical part of the lesson. Ellana and Morrigan venture outside of Skyhold and down into the valley below, past the refugee camps and into the solitude of the mountains so Ellana can observe the wildlife and learn to copy an animal's soul. She is pretty set on a bird being her first form. To become a bird means she'll be able to see the world from above and can scout out areas on missions. It also means a quick escape if she finds herself in trouble. Here in the mountains, she expects to find brown or gray birds -- perfect for not attracting unwanted attention. As the pair enter under the eaves of the trees, Ellana can hear the songs of plenty of birds, so it shouldn't be hard to study one.

{ late cloudreach: korrin }
Once Ellana unlocks the way to shapeshift, it's an amazing thing. At first she sticks to the ground, learning how to hop along as a bird, but a stray cat coming towards her forces her to spread her wings and take flight. It's awkward at first, but she keeps at it, fluttering between several trees near the stables. Then she grows more brave and lands on the barn roof. Soon she's sailing around Skyhold to land on parapets and banner poles. When she spots Korrin, she figures she ought to let her know she's chosen shapeshifting as a specialization over rift magic, but she doesn't want to give her the shock of her life by shifting back in front of her. She flies into the barn, up to the hayloft, where she turns back into an elf, clothes and all. Then she climbs down and jogs after her friend.

"Korrin! I have some exciting news."

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Ellana wants to ask what problem she's gotten wrong, but she instead answers Benevenuta's question, since she assumes she'll be getting to that in a moment.

"It was meant to show nobles that their beliefs on elves are wrong. It would be good if I made them change their opinion, but I doubt any were open-minded enough for it. Still, I made them think, and that at least is a step in the right direction. If they keep thinking about it, that will keep the Inquisition in their thoughts too, as elves are a part of it." But then she looks down at her cup and shrugs a shoulder. "At least, I hope that's what they're thinking. I won't deny that acting that way was also good for me personally."

Ah.

Yes. A good goal- but Maker, what a risky play to achieve it, and Benevenuta's lips purse for a moment. At least Ellana already sees it unlikely, but her concern is how little she sees that she may have damaged her own ability to build on it in the future. The first problem to address is never how to speak; it is how to listen.

"In the short term," she agrees, "I imagine it was very satisfying."

She doesn't sigh.

"Unfortunately, you begin with a false premise - that to them you are a person." Her tone is kind; she's frank because she must be, because this is a hard lesson but an unavoidable one if Ellana means to continue down this path. "They will not respect you for presuming yourself an equal when Halamshiral burns and you are of less use to them than dead they don't mourn as people but as tools wasted. They will not remember it the way you hope. It is a good message, but a sharp thing too quickly - there is foundation work to do, first."

"Well, yes, it was. It gave me confidence." Morrigan's taught her to not care what any ignorant human thinks, because she has the ancient blood of the elvhen and they don't. The power they once held potentially flows through her veins the same as theirs. But there are the other elves to think of, and how her actions on the Mage Council affects them.

Ellana listens, eyes set firmly on Benevenuta as she speaks. "That depends on how you think I should set the foundation." Her tone is measured, because while she wants to better herself, she isn't comfortable going to any lengths to do it. She'd rather be happy with who she is, than pretend to lower herself just so she can pull strings behind the scenes.

Perhaps unexpectedly, Benevenuta laughs, musical and light; not cruel, but a little wry. "There," she says, amused, "you see? You express yourself perfectly clearly. You're thrown because you don't prepare for the answers."

A tilt of her hand - "It's no more for me to choose your path than to give you a voice. I can do neither. What I can do, what I am willing to do, is ensure that you understand the consequences of both before you act. That you act deliberately. You give me idealist's answers and I admire them, but the idealist who doesn't see the battle they fight achieves nothing. And the battle is much, much more than knowing when you are spoken to rudely. It is knowing what they think before they think it. Any path is risky - any path risks more than just yourself. Do it blindly, loudly, and it won't be you who is hurt first."

Benevenuta didn't choose that path; she was the weakness targeted when her mother did. She doesn't set out to dissuade Ellana, but something worth doing is only ever worth doing right and with your eyes open.

That response has Ellana blinking a little, but she can see her point. Confidence comes in many forms: from not caring what people think, to having an idea going into something how she's already going to respond. It helps cut down on her nervousness.

"Then you're saying they are thinking more than what I can already guess is going to be directed at me?" Nobles can't be holding back when they tell Ellana their opinions on her people, and on her. "Will you teach me how to know what they're thinking?"

That reaction is mirrored in how taken aback Benevenuta is by the initial question. It isn't the first time she's been startled by what she can't simply assume the Dalish elves will understand, and probably won't be the last time; there is no sense dwelling on it, but she gathers her thoughts and considers how to put it, leaning back a little in her seat, setting the teacup down.

"I am saying," she says, finally, kindly, "that they are not thinking of you at all. Your confidence will serve you well in cultivating a thick skin to their unkindness, but you must understand that it is not about you. They can say these things to you because it is easy, because it is meaningless, because it requires nothing of them and bears no consequence. They think of what it makes you feel to hear no more than you think of how your boots feel to be worn. Perhaps it would annoy you," lightly, "if one day your boots decided they did not care for it, and gave out."

A little gesture - "You would not apologise and mediate with your boots. You would have them mended, or buy another pair."

Benevenuta shakes her head; "To influence a person - any person, in anything - you must understand what drives them. Why do they act as they do? What are they protecting? What do they care about, dream of? When I come to a meeting," she says, smiling slightly, "I am not planning what I will say as if it is a speech. I am considering what will be said, and by who, and for what reason. I am considering what I value, and what I can compromise on. I am prepared to be persuaded to see another point of view. And I speak when I have something to say that is a part of that conversation. It is the very same principle, more gently applied."

Ellana too sets down her cup, but unlike Benevenuta, she leans forward instead, taking this all in. What she says doesn't offend her, and it really doesn't sting either. But it is a new perspective.

"So it's another form of power?" she asks. "Nobles may say rude things to me, but it's just... conversation, like telling me their boots have worn out. I'm nothing to them, so their words aren't meant to get me to react, but just them talking so they're the center of attention." She hopes she's getting the gist of this.

"How you approach a meeting is how I do too. I can be swayed to another side, and I'm willing to listen. Some things I can't be moved on, but those are few and far between. It's just when I do give my opinion, I feel as though it's so easily refuted, and I've somehow become a child seated with the adults. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but I can't... see the threads, even when they're laid out in front of me. You seem to understand how everything weaves together and how people will react to our decisions. I always seem to guess wrong."

"You are guessing," Benevenuta says, gently, "and I am not."

She considers for a moment, and then returns to the first point - the latter will come out of the former, in the end. "It isn't power that I describe, it is simple status quo. To most, your attention is as meaningless as your thoughts; when you give it, you gain little, and neither do they, it is simply the way of things. Some of them will not notice if you don't. Others will see it and decide that you must be put in your place. You need to understand that they will not restrain themselves to unkind words, and they need not be direct."

No; if Ellana makes enemies of players of the Game, the very least of what matters will be the things said to her.

"They don't care about being the center of your attention except insofar as why would they not be? But if you learn to listen, to observe, to understand, you can understand a person. And use that knowledge, and to build your power out of your cleverness. If you guess, it is a matter of time that you will guess badly wrong. You are very brave, I am sure, you are not afraid to risk your life. But if you don't learn more than bravery, you will discover how little it helps you to live with the preventable death of someone who suffered for your poor judgment. You think enough on your own words - you know yourself. What you need to do is listen, and learn to understand what lies behind others. Every cleverly crafted speech in the world is worthless delivered to the wrong audience in the wrong moment."

Again, Ellana tries not to let the words sting. She's admitted that she's uneducated, and she's here to learn. It just worries her how little she's understood of the world up until now. She's sure city elves know so much more by virtue of growing up around these powerful and terrible humans. They know how to navigate the waters and not get caught in the rapids. Ellana wants to be that way too. She doesn't want to be the one who said the wrong thing and ruined everything for everyone.

Her eyes lower to the table, much as they've done during their meetings with the whole council. Ask her to build a fire, weave a basket, or tie the ropes on the aravel's sails and she's a natural. But understand a person? Build power out of cleverness? Ellana doesn't think herself very clever at all. How do people learn this stuff?

"I listen at the meetings, and I listen in general, but how do I understand what is behind their words without guessing?"

"You learn to understand what you are listening to," Benevenuta says, frankly. "To make no simple assumptions, to consider a perspective not your own and that has nothing to do with you, and understand what such a person might value. What drives them. Why they choose as they do for themselves."

It's easy to be angry at things that seem opposed; it's harder to realise most of the time, it isn't even opposition. It's a different priority, and it's not always wrong.

Ellana takes a moment to consider this as she takes up her tea once more to have a sip. To just listen and understand seems simple, but...

"All right. I do see that I have a lot to educate myself on, but I wonder at how to understand things I have no context for. I don't come from a Circle or a noble family. But... well, do you understand me? And the Dalish perspective? Maybe you do because I've hidden little of my thoughts, but what about those who hold things close to the chest?" She thinks of Vivienne especially here. The woman is firm on wanting education for young mages, and for it to be in the strict Circle system. But that was a system that she's heard varying accounts on, and most of it wasn't good.

"Like Vivienne. What she says about training has to do with following the Chantry's rules on training mages in the Circle. Everything she is for has to do with reinstating the Circles and protecting mages in Circles. But she didn't live in the Circle. How can I understand her when I can't understand why she says one thing and does another?"

"Your perspective is your perspective," she observes, mild as a lamb. "Just as mine is my own. I do not judge all of the Dalish by you, and nor should you judge each Circle mage by me - as I have no doubt you've already discovered."

Because while Benevenuta quietly and steadfastly agitates for freedom and supports, empathetic and patient, those who suffered the Circles - she makes no secret that her own experience was far from unpleasant. She could only have experienced more freedom if she'd been Dorian's peer in Tevinter instead of just in troublemaking, and she is respectful of the experiences of her Southern contemporaries but she never claims their struggle as hers; her memories of her time in the Circle that educated her are fond, quite probably fonder even than Vivienne's of Montsimmard.

And yet, in this particular matter, they could not be more opposed.

After a slight pause - and a bit of the tea - she tilts her hand.

"In all things, people say one thing and do another. It isn't particular to Vivienne, or to politicians; it is simply the way of a world that neither thanks nor rewards honesty. What someone says is one part. A small part, a place to begin, only."

"Then how can I tell what lies beneath?" she asks, wondering if her questions are becoming tiresome or circular by now. "If a person only ever presents one view, but then suddenly when it's time for action, they've changed, how do I anticipate that? How do I keep up and know what to do in response?"

"You listen," she repeats, unfazed by the necessity; unsurprised. "You learn to listen to more than what is said. To observe what they do, to consider why. To leave yourself and your thoughts and your feelings aside, and consider what might drive another person to do something that seems alien to you."

Alien; even unpleasant. Even abhorrent. A person's own reaction, own horror or distaste or frustration, these things don't come in useful when trying to grasp something. Some will in time be overcome, reconsidered; others reinforced. But it isn't relevant to the study of a person; not useful.

"Always ask yourself; what is the benefit? What is the gain? It's never simple, but it is the most important question to answer. Everything else from that."

"And once I understand their position, what drives them to think and act as they do, then will I have what I need to defend my own position if I don't agree?" Because knowing how to defend her opinion in a meeting is just as important to her as reading others.

"Not so long as you go into it thinking of defense first," Benevenuta says, thoughtful, warming her hands around her teacup. "We on this Council - broken down to simplest parts, we ultimately want the same things. You will never succeed if you come to each meeting prepared to defend yourself. You persuade your colleagues that your position does not need to be defended. You want their understanding and their support - to be able to work with them."

"Yet I think you can guess why my natural inclination is to be on the defensive." She pauses, allowing that to have its moment, and its importance to her as an elf, before she adds, "It's something I will have to unlearn."

With a tilt of her hand-- "Naturally. What keeps you alive in one place harms you in another; you see all through Skyhold demonstrations of the same."

Conditioned responses hobbling them - elves, mages, the vulnerable, the hurt. It isn't unique or unusual, but it doesn't help, at a certain point, either.

"In politics you will have a great many enemies. There's no need for you to create them where they should not be - you will only hurt yourself."

How to avoid enemies, how to gain allies; it's all so important and it's all on a completely different level to what she's used to. Hate is a simple emotion. It's pure and raw, and Ellana has seen it in the eyes of those who despise elves and mages. Indifference never worried her before, because it couldn't hurt her. But indifference from nobles? From others on the Council? It will cripple her. She can't allow that to happen, not when she's agreed to be a voice for Dalish mages.

"Thank you for this. Changing my approach to all this is something I really have to do, and I feel that you've given me so much to consider and think on."

"I hope that I have," she says, with a closemouthed smile, a private sort of expression; the sharp prettiness of her coupled with the warmth of her usual poise tends to lend a girlishness to Benevenuta that she ruthlessly exploits, but there are moments such as these where it's quite apparent that she is not a girl. No; a woman, and a shrewd one, at that.

As she sets down her cup-- "Consider that your enemy, ultimately, is not hatred. Oh, the true monsters - who will see mage, and see elf, and be driven by that, they are out there. But they are small things given power by a world that rewards sameness. Much more it is simple status quo. The way things are for they have always been so, and it's easy. When first you learn something, you must be disciplined, but...in time, it becomes habit, habit becomes nature, and then you're asked how it is you achieve something and you'll find yourself groping a bit for the answer. It becomes thoughtless."

Her shrug is elegant, "To break a singular habit is damned difficult, you know, breaking the habit of a society is a maddening task to set oneself. Our enemy is complacency. Simply in sitting upon this Council, we have said, we shall not be complacent. I consider that something very worthwhile."

Which is true, for all that Benevenuta also considers the Council to be the equivalent of herding drunk cats half the time and the single most frustrating thing she's ever engaged in - not for nothing has she on more than one occasion thought how much simpler it would have been if she'd held off joining herself and simply fed Adelaide the opinions she wanted her to have.

But this is the work she decided to do, and she will do it as she does everything: to the absolute best of her ability, and dragging the best of theirs out of everyone else if need be.

To break herself away from the clan had been easy, because Ellana has never felt settled into it; not like most others. But the rest of the clan? They cling to what they know, and she knows it. She knows change will come so slowly for the Dalish as a whole, and so she had to step forward without them. But despite this, she does carry prejudices and opinions that must be broken.

"It is the same with the Inquisition. Of course, there are plenty here who expect everything to go back to the way it was, but overall, the Inquisition is the only group willing to step forward and bring change. To be a part of that, and the Mage Council as well, I must have confidence in what I'm doing."

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{ OPEN } i'll do what it takes

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