02 | OPEN

[shri]

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.

Comments

[inagutterson]

[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.

[shri]

[ 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.

[inagutterson]

[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.]