let's get deep

[champions]

FORM: crystal
SENDER: Marisol Candelas Ximena Odalys Esmeralda Hierro Asturias de la Nieve Vivas
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: a question
WHEN: whenev
WHERE: Kirkwall (Hightown, probably)
NOTES: don't hate her because she's beautiful

You know, I feel it has been too long since I have had a chance to speak with many of you. That is the way when we are all working so much, no? The coming and going makes it so easy to work with people and never truly know them.

( Imagine her, if you will, reclined on a fainting couch, a glass of port lightly held in one hand, a cigarillo balanced between the fingers of the other, and wearing something appropriately luxurious. )

So, I am wondering, what does responsibility mean to you? More what you consider your responsibilities, than the offerings of a dictionary. Understanding one another is key, I hear.

Comments

[foxsays]

Accountability, unasked for, unwanted, by anyone and everyone but still tossed in your lap like yesterday's fish guts. A state of blame.

[As if everyone doesn't have the same number of fingers curled into their own palms leaving welts.]

[champions]

I am very lucky to have limited experience with fish guts being thrown anywhere near my person.

( She pauses for a moment; Araceli sounds rather grimmer than usual. ) Do you think of all responsibility this way?

[foxsays]

Fish guts wash off and well, they're only fish. [They could be worse.

Fish guts don't work their way under your skin. Still she takes a breath, doesn't chew her lip.] It all has a way of turning out that way in the end even if you've asked for it. You can't control everyone about you and how that colours what you're doing.

[champions]

No, but I would that when that effect is had... it can be a little more lingering than fish guts.

[foxsays]

Mmm not everything washes off so easily and pours away with the bathwater. We'd just see it from very different sides of the table.

[champions]

( Her head tilts, unseen as it may be, curious. )

What do you mean?

[foxsays]

[A pause, the quiet tapping of her fingers on glass (the kraken's tank, just to keep his attention) aware that this could very well sour how the conversation's going but sometimes a mood is A Mood.]

You're a mage and that's shaped your life but it's hard to deny that your status hasn't shaped it either. So if it were different and I was as Antivan as I sound, I'd still be a common girl who'd risen above her station regardless of her hand.

There are some things that have a way of staying true including how much your seat at the table is begrudged.

[champions]

( Marisol hums, thoughtful. Interesting, Araceli. )

Would you prefer to be a common Antivan girl, instead of a rifter?

[foxsays]

[Araceli's laugh is as abrupt as it is bitter.]

You've met other rifters or you've spoken with them, heard them on here. I'd be from here. A girl off a ship. Sailor father. Mother out of a brothel. There's little I'd need to change but this is my home now, I'm not blind to that. It'd be easier if that were the whole truth.

[champions]

What of your history? Your culture?

private ∞

[foxsays]

That won't stop being part of me: the sea is my blood, if you ever want to hear the stories I'll tell them but that doesn't change. What it does is give people easier leverage, I was at the negotations same as the mages were and I won't pretend that were our situations different, if what I'm posing now were what it was, I'd have a greater luxury when all this ends than you might. I'd be able to walk away, wouldn't I?

[If she hadn't been at the negotiations maybe she could sound hopeful or wistful about it. Instead, since she was there at it, arguing, trying to come to terms.]

So long as I remember, by my culture then nothing is lost. I know who I am, where I come from. But I'm not the flesh and blood that I was, I'm-- I'm something other. From the Fade through a spirit.