therookery | 02

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FORM: Sending Crystal.
SENDER: Lakshmibai
RECIPIENT: Any one and everyone.
WHAT: Head of Community Outreach & Are you a rifter? Do you know how to weave? Want to turn a profit and help out the inquisition? Please inquire.
WHEN: Time is a flat circle.
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: nothing too serious

Greetings... It is Rani Lakshmibai.

[ Right, that out of the way. ]

I have two matters which I need a moment - [ Here we go. ] - I have recently been made Head of Community Outreach, for which I'm honoured. I wish to a little more to understand where I might be applied in helping others, but as yet many things still escape me as where help might be best applied to those that need it. If you have a moment to speak with me, in person, I would be much obliged. My Quarters are in the Gallows.

[ Onwards then, because who works and doesn't overwork? Not her. ] Secondly, and for rifters amongst us... I have spoken with Master Barnabas, a merchant here in Kirkwall, and I realised that whilst what many of us bring in terms of items here can be desirable and turn a good profit for it's... foreign nature. Such things are short-term investments. [ And that as far as she's concerned, is a waste. ] As such, I am looking for women or men, of moderate skill in weaving textiles and who can take direction easily, to join me in such work. You will be paid, though primarily, all extra earnings are to be funded back into the Inquisition. I intend to work things that no part of Thedas has seen before, and feel we are uniquely qualified for such an endeavour.

If such a thing is in your ability, please enquire.

[ Somewhere, her husband is following her about, tugging at her hair and laughing. ]

That is all. My regards.

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I walked all of them when I arrived. But as you can imagine, none of them wanted to speak to me much, if at all.

[ The door is open to him, she's bent over her desk. Taking notes as he talks - but it is not Trade, or English as it might be to her, it is just rows and rows of devangari script. Pouring from one side of the page to the other. Little notes crammed into sections around the block paragraphs.

She looks up when he arrives, gesturing him to come in, take the spot across from her that has clearly been set out for just this. Putting out a clean cup for him and pouring him tea from the pot she had made herself for this. It comes almost automatic, he's not the first in the door, or certainly the last. ] No one ever wants to speak or help such things. [ Once he is seen too, she smooths out the set of the Inquisition uniform, and sits again herself. ] Tell me about the Alienage. It is spoken of in whispers, but no one tells me how such a thing came to be.

[Firstly: he is dressed in a mish-mash of the things people who love him have gifted Satinalia past. Blue knitted jumper, a good coat (there are several pink nugs peering from the pockets peacably as if quite used to this sort of getting about), a pair of boots that don't look as if a dwarf should wear them curling faintly at the toe, lacings at their side, an almost-green. The hair is the same hopeless 'what is a hairbrush, never heard of one' mess it was in Orzammar so that's just him as his eyes flit about.

(Can't help but do that, habits are habits, when you're small and reared in the dark you always go looking.)]

The alienage isn't too far from how I grew up, only people don't really bother much with dwarves unless the dwarves are hasslin' 'em. [Carefully not bitter about that. Months ago, his lady's intervention when it all hurt worse than he could stand it and no one cared-- But humans willing to speak of alienages are relatively few, so with the cup settled in his small rough hands, Yngvi takes a sip.] Back a long time ago, long long time, when the elves still had a kingdom - their second one - they had a place called the Dales in Orlais. But they lived their way, and the humans didn't like it because humans don't like a lot of things, 'specially when it's a whole lot of people not living how they want them to live. Chantry wanted 'em to submit, elves were like 'nah mate, piss off', and the Chantry were all 'well I never' but however you say that in Orlesian.

[More tea, Stroganugg's soft pink head is petted with his free hand.]

So the Chantry rounded up, like, everyone for a big old march against the elves in the Dales, and after that whoever was squatting on the big fancy throne in Val Royeaux decreed 'oh, and yes in all cities you will have this one place I suppose where all of you will live' and under her breath she muttered 'it'll be a shithole'. Because. They are. Compared to most of it. This is when the Dalish came about because the elves who decided that they wanted to go live in the forests would call themselves after the place they lost and maybe it was easier then but most of them are shits about it now, lording it over elves in Alienages I mean if you've lost everything and had a whole Chantry army crush you and take everything away, maybe it's the only choice you can make to just go where they've given you after instead of more hardship. Doesn't really sound like a choice. Like a false choice.

[ She will - at one point or another - wrangle that hair. Attack it firmly with a brush. Pin the whole thing in a braid to stop it for at least a few days from flittering away and about.

Which is rather secondary, or more a later concern, to the sweet pink things she can see poking out of his pocket, lingering on them. Briefly. She has business after all when he starts to talk.

But it goes, she flicks the page over, a new series of notes. His name is at the top in common language, the date beside. The line below, she once more begins to take notes. Slowly taking shape of this land. Its history, its suffering. That no, humans do not, do they? How odd to be grouped after so long, as something entirely different. But it only came as proof of more the same. ]

What a choice. [ She breathes out thin. ] I'm more familiar than most in my position might what to admit, I suppose.

[ She sips her own tea, pausing in her writing. ] If I may, it seems to me, it is because dwarves control something that is wanted very much, and they alone are unique in having, in controlling it and know it too. That and... being underground.

[ She couldn't do it, not too long, the dark and the silence, she could not be in it too long. ] But perhaps the latter is my own... thoughts.

[Used to sitting while others write - a child of the Carta (well he'd never have been granted a seat, no matter what state he was in) then with the Boneflayers now Inquisition - so he busies his hands because otherwise the whole of him will be set to squirming. It won't help. Not when he's talking about this.

Not when he has the memory of the dark place with screaming, with Lady Wemot snapping at him.

He looks at her again, and well some humans aren't always all the way human but normally they're elfblooded but so far none of the rifters he knows have said anything so he wouldn't know, and whatever she is for her to say, not for him to go guessing at.]

Chantry controls lyrium. [If he's going to go about doing this, he'll just throw everything at the wall and under the cart all at once without pause.] They need it for the Templars. I mean we - Carta - we smuggle it 'cause what's life without the black market where you get whatever you need, and even Templars get addicted or get cut off or get kicked out but still have a thirst, but Chantry controls the trade. Dwarves can find it and only dwarves can mine it safely [which is said with a scoff, he's met enough of them gone wrong when something went wrong--

Almost his whole body shakes with the shudder at something not to be remembered.]

There's the whole thing about the Stone. Ancestors and all that shit and it's shit. They've got Castes. Orzammar is fucked if you couldn't tell s'just that Orzammar is down there so humans don't need to see it with their eyes, and if you try to tell 'em, they really don't like it.

[Mages especially who cannot imagine that any suffering will ever be greater than their own, that now they're part of this world they have to live in it, that now they have to fend for themselves like every other sorry bastard does who wasn't born to a silver spoon up the jacksie.]

No one does. Especially an outsider when they know those outsiders would as much destroy your way of life if you were not so vital to them. [ Nothing he says, is so unfamiliar. Especially not to a Brahmin daughter born in Varanasi. Her homeland was not perfect - but she knew why her elders often to hold onto ideas long past any use, because after everything was taken off her, what else did they have left? ]

Forgive me, did you say addicted? The Chantry encourages their Knights to eat Lyrium?

No, I mean humans or the mages because the mages? Oh boohoo my life was so terrible where I always had a roof with no leaks and proper walls and three meals a day and a real education with Templars watching me oh woe is me-- they hate when you say anyone else had it hard. If you tell mages about Orzammar and Castes or elves and alienages, or how pretty much everywhere if you're not born all noble and shiny you're watched anyway and they'll come down on you hard, they'll turn. [A snap of his fingers because it happened, he was drunk, upset, hurting, and yeah he was lashing out but no one really listened except the few he expected.

Mages can do things no one else does, the game is bloody rigged compared to a whole seething mass of other people who don't have the same chance. There's an ugly heat in his chest at the thought, at the memory. He sips his tea slowly, carefully, pushes it down. (He'll train later, hit things until it goes away.)]

Well...yeah. Templars need it. Chantry needs Templars. Chantry likes to be very in charge. So… [The expansive gesture of a small dwarf who isn't exactly saying everything but sort of is at the same time because he can't just give people all of the facts, put the pieces together etc.]

[ The pen taps - listening quietly. A hand that settles over her mouth. ] I see, my mistake - to each their own hell amongst them, is it? That would explain it.

[ Her eyes slide across, briefly, behind her hand. To the door - then back to him and what he is saying and she is... in a precarious position. Naturally. She is no child of this place. She is for the mark on her hand not liked. There are things, to that end, he will be able to say, that she cannot. That in public she must bite her tongue on if she did not wish to lose her head. If it not for her failures, how badly she had lost the last time she played politic, she might not have the wariness. But she most certainly does, even and measured.

Because no - he doesn't need to explain. Not really. Listening, taking notes. Sipping her tea in a deeper mouthful. ] So they keep their grip as tight as might be. Another question if I might - what do the templars do with the Lyrium?

I don't know about that, just mages first, everyone else after. If at all. [They'd throw everyone else under the cart so why shouldn't he? What's a mage ever done for him?

Watching her carefully - he grew up in Darktown, all the dealings where it was invariably how it was said, how it was done, as much what they did say about the table or in the darkened carved out tunnels - he finishes the tea, sets it down, and scoops out one nug to set on his lap. Something better to do with both hands. Less fidgeting overall to have it nudging up into his scraped hands for the petting it thinks it deserves.] Yeah, wouldn't want Templars to be able to get it however they pleased but these days I'm not really part of it so I don't know how the Inquisition sorts that all out, must be a right state honestly. So-- it lets Templars be Templars. And it does stuff with mages. 'Cause mages use lyrium too for their spells, they don't need to but when they get all tapped out then they chug it and it's like a kick up the arse, good to go. Think it fucks 'em up too if they take too much but I wasn't sellin' to no mages so I dunno there really but Templars can stop mages doing mage stuff. All a neat little circle really; Chantry puts the mages in Circles, Chantry has the Templars, Chantry controls who gets how much lyrium, Templars can stop mages casting spells.

[ Damn, the thing was cute. But she keeps her hands to herself, at least for now. Still sipping on the tea, still writing out when it is needed. She was going to end up with cramped hands by the end of the day at this rate.

Which - if that was Templars used them for - it was no small feat. A needed one too if what she saw of this place was anything to go by. But that still seemed... The opium wars, are what she thinks of. The demand and control of substances - though they certainly had quite a different purpose. Though once more she swallows back on it. ]

Thank you. You have explained a great deal to me. [ A deeper breath, watching the little creature play about in his hands with a soft look for it. ] If I may - there is one good thing to being an outsider, here. I have no stake nor weight to any of these politics. My concern, my only concern as far as my position is concerned, is that those that need the most immediate help, receive it. Mage, poor man, shard-bearer or otherwise.

[Stroganugg has a powerful aura.

Yngvi can't help it when she says that because it sounds wrong, his face screwing up. Outsiders not having weight or stake when-- well Thranduil's in charge of their whole research division, he's always been involved in things and when it comes to being an outsider he's not just a rifter, he's a bloody elf. A tall elf. Has enough of something about him that the Dalish'd take a shine to.] How d'you--

[He stops. Considers d'you actually wanna do this because she speaks like a lady, holds herself up like one even from somewhere else, and Yngvi knows who he is. What he is. Isn't smart enough to go asking things. (Is. But doesn't think it. Talks himself out of it outside of the few trusted people who'll have the patience for it.)] I mean you're here, aren't you? S'not like you don't got weight or stakes in things. Orzammar says 'trade happens' like the Carta somehow aren't involved, don't mean we don't exist y'know? [It's a bad idea to bring those up in the same breath, he's grateful for the nug in his hands.] Poor man should come first the way I see it, who looks out for the poor man when other people can do things that the poor man can't?

[It feels very bold to say it, but he does make himself look her dead in the face so he can at least say he did that much if he goes recounting the story after.]

[ She cannot blame him for that question, or hurt before it. It is a decent one - as Gwen's before him, even if his is a fair kinder than that one. Why should anyone believe anything you say about yourself? You're here now, the rest doesn't matter anymore.

But the end of that question - it is something she wants to take with both her hands and tear apart that sky herself. They deserve to lose their heads, each and every noble that caused this suffering. The teeth she sets into the inside of her lip enough to sting, the pain to clear her mind, you are not Sita to burn yourself in your rage, no matter how you might desire it. Stiff with the confinement of it all as she so often felt.

Instead, she rises, out of her seat - exactly as he said, she is stiff-backed, shoulders a rolled back line, a soldier true, but more than that no matter how much she might pretend. To that, there is a great deal she is pretending over - and the same way as with Kitty, she is not so much a fool as to want to let anyone else here her thoughts on the matter. So she goes to the door, swinging it shut. Providing them as much privacy as they could have anywhere in the gallows. Locks it, for good measure, before she comes back to sit across from him once more. To keep her face on his and refuse to look away. ]

Look at me - [ because she will have his eyes as she had given them so far, and she will have them like she means to hold a soul in her hands, as pure as that was, as tremendous surely, to ever ask someone to give that. With much tender fear and want as all that could be. She will fix to them like she means to make them her own. Without question and forward. The things she keeps back, the things she lets him have, now. Neither charming, nor eloquent, but herself, offered willingly. ] I am Maharani Lakshmibai, those names mean nothing to you, but to my people, they were a promise I made on my wedding day when I took that name. For Lakshmi, Mahalakshmi, is the Goddess of Wealth, Luck and Prosperity for my people. I swore my devotion to serving all those that came to me. That I may be their Lakshmi, that all they must do is ask it of me, and I would gladly give it to them. That when they needed protection, I would be their Kali and remove their suffering, when they needed raising up, I would be Saraswati to guide them to better themselves. That I would always, be theirs.

[ All that she is, all that she has been, and how much none of it had changed. How odd a thing that was. ] I would dishonour the lives of the people who gave themselves to my service, to treat those here as anything less than my own when they come to me. That is what it means to be Rani, to me. I was not born to that title, and I did not keep it through anything less than their love. If it means anything to me, it means that. Their hurt is my hurt, their pain is my pain, and I will be all that must for them. Poor or otherwise.

[ As fervent as prayers, she means it utterly and even that is not enough - she supposes she has only that to give, and her actions.

- And what she knows of others. ] I do not give a fuck what the Carta says, Orlais says, what Fereldon says, or even the revered Mother in the Chantry when they would as readily call me demon and see me strung up for even speaking of my own Gods. I might do much, accomplish everything I could ever hope and be as you say, with as much stake as anyone, but do not ask me to be naive and not expect the knife in my back for what I am when it becomes inconvenient or when the Inquisition cannot protect me. I have lost... too much, to ever forget those lessons.

[His eyes follow her. Both legs ready to-- don't be stupid, she's got a bit more than a foot on you, you wouldn't be outrunning her if you went for it, idiot boy that turns to Einar's low growl in his ear, the smoke-laced edge of amused disappointment as ever, as always. The sting of it.

Thranduil is taller and a rifter but he's never made Yngvi feel little. Always strangely fond he reckons, Thranduil who asks after his hurts. Who has his place here and wouldn't do it this way. And Coupe is tall, is broad, is that sort of towering strength you'd say was a force but she's been his friend so long he gets to forget that. Get pissed in a cellar then spill your hurts and she just is. Not rifters or Templars or titles. There's a lesson in that somewhere.

This isn't-- None of him likes this, the nug is tucked back in his pocket, his coat is folded about himself as his shoulders move restlessly, trying to decide if he should be larger or smaller, which one gets him what, what works better in a strange room with a closed door with a strange woman. His heart is too fast, mouth dry, throat sticking to itself as if he didn't just finish a cup of tea. Breathe. Just breathe. What's the very worst thing that'll happen to you in here?

(He can imagine a lot of very bad things.)

Before he knew much of anything, there was an obedience instilled in him. The jerky snap of his head, jaw clenched tight so his mouth doesn't do anything he doesn't want it to.]

But you're not a goddess! You're just a woman, the same as everyone else that comes here and has to live here and it doesn't matter what you were there. D'you know what you sound like just-- just reeling off all of that? You sound mad. You sound like the mad terrible people in the tales that did terrible things and crushed all the small people right under them because they thought they were right! [His voice, perhaps regrettably, creeps up a whole octave, bottom lip starting to go alone with the whole chin; if he tried to clench his jaw any harder he'd have broken it. Sometimes the body does all it can to protect itself, and it gives in, says that no this is the time to be soft, stop doing this, stop making yourself terrible and hard even when you think it's what you want.

His eyes are very bright but he can't look away, wonders if this is how nugs feel before of wolves as his breath comes out of him in horrid staccato shudders.]

You can't make yourself that, you can't say you'll be that and expect people'll just go along with it - what happens if they turn around and say no your holiness? You gonna hold their feet to the fire? You're human. You don't know what-- you don't-- you--

[There's a horrible moment when he thinks that he's going to be sick. Or cry. The crying would be worse, his mouth is hot and salty for all that his face is dry.]

You should care about the Carta. You don't know shit and might have a dozen names when I got one and a second what got given to me by the man who took me and my brother out the gutter but the Carta is everywhere. They take people in Orzammar who've got nothing and they're in Darktown and Lowtown, and they're probably hobnobbin' with the nobles because they'll get you what you need. But you'll eat your own brothers and sisters, and if you have the choice of Deep Roads or Carta, or starving and Carta, you'd take it. You don't know because you're not from here. You won't ever know what it's like. To be part of that. To always know you're there. That you're in it.

[All of this is entirely the wrong approach with someone like Yngvi. And fear sharpens up all the parts of Yngvi that have only ever known what surviving is on a knife's edge in the dark. He wants her to shout, to be angry, to be told to leave because he has to go, he can't even breathe in this room, there's no air left--]

Open the door. [Is that him? It sounds very far-off, his own voice.] I want to leave.

[ She doesn't shout - or yell or use her height or weight or all that impossible strength. Another day, perhaps even, she might. That he had insulted her faith. The lives that her people had given. That he insulted her father, a servant, and the streets she grew up hungry and half wild in with nothing.

No, none of it comes, for in her mouth sits independence, sits a homeland that is free, but she is trapped here, and she has not wept in years. She cannot. If she begins where is she to stop? Another day she could have swallowed of this all and spat back all he, in turn, did not understand. She had put of something into his hands as surely as she might anyone else, a want to speak honestly to how she felt. How much she loathed the games of nobles, lords, priests, to assure him that she would always know what would come first.

But she had been wrong and -

She snatches for the veil, that ugly sting she can feel all the way down. That feels like frustration, humiliation and so surely grief. Her head snaps away. Proud because that is all she has, stiff because she doesn't know how to give herself in.

After all, she had been told, and Gwen had warned her, and she had no one else to blame but herself. ]

Forgive me. [ Because what else was there to say? Her fingers grip so hard into the cotton, they turn white. ] The door was never locked. Thank you for speaking with me.

[An interesting stalemate this is.

(He knows where he's going to run after his rooms. When he's calmed down. Changed his clothes that cling to him now, sticking to him when he gets up on numb legs.)

One nod with a jerk of his head, and he moves fast for a dwarf but when did he ever have the luxury to amble about, to stroll unless it was for a reason? His hands don't fumble with the handle. He doesn't look back.

He's still polite enough not to slam it behind him. Wouldn't want to make more of a scene than he already has.]

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