therookery | crystal; ota

Entry tags:

crystal; ota

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: Ness Tavane (tadfool)
RECIPIENT: Errbody

[ the sending crystal comes on, and a feminine voice clears their throat; she is clearly entirely new to this, and perhaps to public speaking in general, but she wants to make a good impression!! ]

Hello, Riftwatch. My name is Ennaris Tavane, I'm a recent arrival to your organization. If Ennaris is a mouthful, Ness will also do! I wanted to introduce myself, and I also have a request, should anyone be willing to assist me.

I've joined the Diplomacy division [ cuz damn do y'all seem to be the most in need of bodies ] and am eager to get my feet beneath me as far as work there goes. I can read and write with proficiency, and am an excellent note taker, should those skills be of use to anyone. I... can scribe, [ said with all the enthusiasm of someone admitting to being physically capable of mucking out the stables, yes, but— ] though my real skill lies in research and compilation of disparate sources of information. I'm happy to offer my assistance to anyone who needs it while I suss out what jobs need doing and where my skills would best be applied.

As for my request, I was hoping there might be someone—or even multiple someones—who would be willing to tutor me in history. I have several gaps in my knowledge, and would prefer to fill them in as quickly as possible. Please feel free to reply back to me here, on the crystal, or to get with me privately if you're interested. We can discuss compensation, though I admit I've not got a terribly deep purse at the moment.

Erm. Thank you for your attention. Have a good day? Binder's knots, feels like I'm talking to air...

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I would very much appreciate access to any such notes, recent history is the subject I'm least versed on. History books can't quite keep up with the pace of a war, it seems.

When I was — a civilian guest of the Inquisition, which is sort of the mother organisation of this one, I wrote propaganda for them for a short time and I was given a great deal of access in order to do it. So I've been in the habit of taking meticulous notes.

( she also sort of plans to write a history book, at some point, after all this; she is sometimes more and sometimes less still committed to that plan, but by now it feels as if not to do it would be a waste. )

You're new, I take it. Gwenaëlle Baudin — ( and an afterthought, like she isn't used to it yet: ) Captain of our Watch. I have a few questions for new arrivals that are probably going to sound more alarming than they actually are.

[ meticulous notes, her siren song— ]

[ with all the breathy yearning of a schoolboy asking to see up someone's skirts, ] I would very much appreciate access to those notes, [ aaand now the realization she's being weird and has had to shake herself out of it, ] as well as their author, if you'd permit me some of your time. I can't imagine a better person to ask questions than someone who was there taking notes on all of it.

Ah—is this like the Personnel Officer and the Griffon Keeper? I've got nothing going at present, I can answer questions when and wherever you'd like.

( down, stephen junior. )

I'll wrap up in my office and you can come and meet me down by La Souveraineté— the houseboat, at the slip near our ferry.

( whether she's a rifter or not (sounds likely, but you never know, she could be a shut in mage?) she will have had to cross the harbour to get to the gallows, and the houseboat is difficult to miss going by on the way to the fortress. )

We can take two birds with one stone.

[ they've already met; gwen will never again know peace from overenthusiastic nerds. ]

The house—? The houseboat, yes, I do recall seeing it, come to mention. I'll—well, to be frank, I'll probably be waiting for you there, I imagine it might take you a bit more time to wrap up your official business than for me to walk down a few flights of stairs. I'll be the blonde, hair in a braid.

[ probably the description is not necessary, ness is nerdy enough to stand out on the docks. still, seems polite to let her know what she's looking for. ]

( some polite acknowledgment of that, and then—

ness is right, it does take gwenaëlle longer. she emerges from the fortress, a diminutive brunette with pinned back curls, not looking immediately much like a captain of the watch in tightly-laced burgundy with summer-weight skirts hitched with hikes, carrying a packet of papers beneath her arm that's probably not got anything to do with their particular ends. the closer she gets, the more striking: the burned-in claw scars that drag down her decolletage from beneath the low neckline of her dress, the blank, golden eye that sees nothing beside the amber one that measures ness on first impression.

there is a knife at her hip. it is improbable that the only visible knife is the only one on her. )

Ennaris, ( she greets, voice and accent both distinct; the name isn't difficult to pronounce, but if she hadn't made a particular effort to mimic the way ness had said it, it'd probably have sounded more changed by her high quarter orlesian voice. ) Thank you for waiting.

( (she smells nice, brushing past her to lead them onto the deck, and up the porch steps.)

there's a key in the chatelaine at her waist, and the ... uniquely idiosyncratic nature of the houseboat's exterior gives way to luxuriously plush interiors, costly and particular. the most striking thing, first of all, is the portrait that occupies the far wall of the foyer: a beautiful elven woman of indeterminate age, wearing a loose man's shirt that covers her to upper thigh slid down a shoulder, sat in a plush armchair as if it's a throne and regarding the viewer with a confidently unreadable gaze. she bears a striking resemblance to the mistress of the boat, and a glance will confirm: the necklace hanging around her throat hangs around gwenaëlle's. )

La Souveraineté, ( she says, with an expansive gesture. check out her sick boat. a mildly alarming looking cat (sort of bald, sort of... not exactly bald? looks like if a werewolf had a furball that was a cat,) strolls to the doorway of the gallery adjacent, examines ness and gwenaëlle with equal diffidence, and then swishes its tail and leaves, unmoved. )

[ gwenaëlle, ness notes immediately, is the coolest woman she has ever seen.

that's not hard to accomplish, being as most of the women ness has met are book nerd monks who, even if wildly powerful, have no sense of aesthetic or sartorial sense—but it's still true. she puts ness' modest dress over a shift and corset to absolute shame, to the point ness feels somewhat self-conscious to even be in her presence,

but never mind that, there's notes to read. notes which ness is almost distracted from again (gwenaëlle used her full name, and made the effort for correct pronunciation, is this what respect feels like) before she forces herself back on track, following gwenaëlle into the boat with the most unsure and wobbly steps known to man- or elf-kind.

note to self: don't fucking fall in front of the coolest woman alive. ]

It's an impressive home, [ seems like the polite thing to say when entering someone's residence, something which ness has literally zero experience in. ] That's a beautiful painting.

Merci. ( —does have the air of someone accepting their due, or at least, on behalf of the lady in question (she loves her houseboat so much), and then a glance up at the image of guenievre, as she had never seen her in life,

fleetingly, she thinks: before skyhold, had she even seen guenievre's hair uncovered? )

The artist ( marius, she's almost certain, though she hasn't checked for his mark and she hasn't asked him and she's sort of not sure she ever wants to broach the conversation; maybe he'll see it hanging here, one day, and say, ) does beautiful work with fine models. That was my mother,

( past tense, )

Guenievre Baudin.

( it's sort of a bold statement for the very first thing a person sees, walking in here. it's grown on her, when she'd spent months with the painting propped up against a wall somewhere, uncertain what the fuck she was meant to do with it.

beside the painting there are stairs, and she leads ness up them, through the dark, polished wood, strategic windows and colored-glass lanterns to prevent it from feeling too close and small. ) My study's this way—

[ prior warning of the lack of true half-elves here means that ness does not falter as she follows gwenaëlle up the stairs, though that memory does take a moment to filter through, a moment in which her eyes bounce between the portrait and gwenaëlle with as much subtlety as she can muster. of course, that mustered subtlety means nothing, given what next falls out of her mouth— ]

Ah, I haven't grown accustomed to that, yet. How we carry nothing of our elven parents here, I mean.

[ at least that we might soften the blow of such a faux pas, make it clear that ness is not speaking as an outsider to the experience. it only takes a moment for ness' thoughts to catch up to what she's actually said, and once they do she hesitates, halfway up the stairs with her hand hovering over the rail. ]

My father, [ begins the explanation, but then also, ] my mother too, I'm told she was half as well. We carry it where I'm from, [ a harried gesture at her blunt ears, ] in some ways.

( gwenaëlle glances behind herself at that, considering the math of a scenario that she'd never considered before: it makes sense. two half elves make a third half elf, with a quarter from each parent. and then thedas, where two elfblooded humans will have a fucking human, because that's the only damn option, )

I'm familiar with the idea of places where that's true, ( she says, after a pause, leading ness into a room on the second above-deck level, reasonably spacious, plushly carpeted. it occupies a corner, with windows in the two exterior-facing walls, casting bright daylight still across cabinets, and small desk (just a flat surface, really, no drawers to speak of), two low sofas and a table between. it almost seems more a miniature library than a study, the window-less walls lined with glass-fronted cabinets that protect the books within from being rocked out of place by the movement of the water beneath.

a gesture invites ness down to one of the sofas; she crosses to a cabinet as she speaks. )

We've known half-elves to come through the rifts and be elves in full, but I suppose there's no specific reason it shouldn't go the other way. ( self-evidently. )The elfblooded, we're— indistinguishable. Functionally human in every respect, including that of having only human children. If an elfblooded child is raised apart from their elven family, and no one knows otherwise, there's no way to discover it from the child.

( it's the sort of thing it's worth being clear about, especially because, )

Not everyone advertises it when they have the option not to.

Edited 2024-07-21 08:04 (UTC)

[ the urge to throw herself eagerly upon the bookshelves wars valiantly with ness' complete lack of sea legs for what amounts to a rather lengthy pause between gwenaëlle's gesture and her eventual movement. a none-too-gentle and insistent sway of the boat beneath them eventually makes the choice for her, but even as she drops onto the sofa she leans forward, peering at the cabinets to try to glean titles. ]

I could not avoid its apparence in—my previous life, [ perhaps that's the way to think of it, now, ] even had I wanted to. My ears, but my skin too, I had some of my father's drow colouring. My eyes were purple.

[ lavender, specifically, but it feels a little pretentious to drop shades when they hardly matter here.

numerous different comments bubble up—that makes no sense, it's illogical, even if it isn't evident you're still half human, not wholly—but this isn't her plane, and someone who's lived their whole life here knows the rules of it better than she.

she mourns, still. her eyes had been pretty. ]

I think I can understand why. From what I've heard of your elves, I mean. The elfblooded would be getting it from all sides.

Mmm.

( there's something about that that doesn't quite ring right to her, but in a way that would be difficult to untangle in casual conversation with a person she's just met and she takes her time to think about how she wants to answer it instead of the kneejerk thing that comes to mind. what she settles on, eventually, is— ) One side's more like to hurt your feelings and one more to slaughter your family, so they're not exactly weighted the same in that conversation. Not that no elf has never done harm to the elfblooded,

( thinking of herian, at once, and her ruined ear, )

it's just— I imagine, as an elf, it might be hard to trust someone who can travel far enough that harming them becomes a crime. That we don't always get the same sense of kinship doesn't feel an in kind unfairness, you know.

( once, she might have said they never do, but she's lived more since then, learned more, gone further. it had felt good, actually, to be alix's little sister in halamshiral. eventually, as she unlocks a cabinet to retrieve what she's been hunting for so she can rejoin ness at the sofas, ) If elves were treated differently by humans, maybe they'd feel differently about their human children. It feels like the one side, to me.

[ that rings false to ness, too, in a way she takes similar time to work through. ]

I take your point, [ she says eventually, ] and I wouldn't think to talk over you as someone who's lived this experience for longer than a week or two.

[ but here she is to talk over your experience, oops. she is at least choosing her words very carefully, trying her best to find the diplomatic way to put her point—not that she really has a point, more a feeling. ]

It seems... I would simply hesitate to say that wounds to feelings are not... that they're not to be weighted at all, in this equation. Family who refuses to love you because of a quirk of birth is... not an insignificant wound.

[ not that she has any experience with that that's affecting her judgement, or anything. ]

It of course pales to what humans can inflict on elves, here, I'd never argue that. And I understand your points, about elves not being able to trust humans, no matter the relation. I simply feel for the child of two worlds, I suppose. It would be very lonely.

( gwenaëlle might say, it is, and mean it, but she's alive to complain and her sisters are not so—

she shrugs, )

I don't think they're insignificant, just different. And I don't know that it's family, usually, that does the refusing, but I don't know if I'd lead with that if it were true, either, so maybe I only haven't been told.

( she is thirty years old, and finally she can say: maybe they wanted to love me. maybe they did. everything that her mother had given up for her children — maybe it was more than the terrible thing that she hadn't been able to see past. maybe she will never know, truly, how guenievre baudin felt. how her sisters felt. what they had wanted or dreamed or imagined.

but maybe, finally, she can allow that she doesn't know, and that there are more possibilities than she had once felt. )

It's a ... it's complicated. You know? How your family might feel about you and how the neighbours might and what prospects you have for your life. The people who you love and the people who should love you can hurt you, that's just true, no matter who you are or what your house looks like or the shape of your ears, it's just...

( she spreads her hands. )

In Orlais, it's a rite of passage for the elite chevaliers to get drunk and go into the alienage to kill an elf. It's family wounds versus — an elf family or a human family can be ruinous, because they're family. But you could say, that elf stole from me and I want their hand cut off, and they can't say it back to you. I don't mean that if— if your elven family hurt you, or if that's what you've seen before, then I'm not saying it doesn't matter or that it shouldn't be painful. I'm saying if I had my sisters horse-whipped in the street, they wouldn't have had any recourse against me.

[ they're not that separate, her mind insists, they can't be, because what elfblood person would have that power, who would let them be in a position to order such a thing—but she keeps her mouth shut, because the truth is she doesn't know. surely there are elfblooded people whose lineage was kept from them, and they could do whatever they like. how much does it really matter if your elven family hold you at arm's length, and your alienage community doesn't welcome you with the same joy and pride that they do your proper elven siblings, in the face of that? ]

I take your point, [ she says again. ] It's—I clearly have some, you know, [ dismissive hand waving ] feelings of my own on the subject. I don't quite agree with you on their separateness, but how much of that is a rational position informed by logic and how much is, well, not that, it's. An unproductive place to have a conversation from, really.

[ "daddy didn't love me, which is just as bad as human chevaliers hunting elves for sport". she is not nearly far enough up her own sad ass to think that with any seriousness, thank the gods.

ness takes a deep breath, visibly sloughing off the melancholy that the conversation has produced, and looks to gwenaëlle's hands instead. ] I'm sorry to have distracted us from the topic at hand. Are these your notes?

[ it's not a firm rebuff from the topic of elfblooded experience, more a self-conscious redirect. a perfect stranger has no interest in hearing about the way her familial issues have informed her response to this discussion, and this was supposed to be an academic and business-related meeting. ]

( laying out the notes — meticulously written in fine, ladylike handwriting — she glances up and says, )

I don't think it's irrelevant that you should know what you're walking into, ( not unkindly, ) but I will say, I won't pretend I speak for everyone. My experience is fairly unique. But so's yours, so—

( her shrug is elegant. )

You're getting a lot of my opinions, you haven't got to apologise for actually bothering to have a conversation with me about them.

( fundamentally: everything they're talking about is how gwenaëlle has seen the world. to her, it feels of a piece, not a diversion but a continuance. in her experience, pressingly relevant that those from worlds where the elven experience is so vastly different begin to get a feel for what they should expect, here. )

A lot of these notes here, ( which are, in the earliest parts, signed lady gwenaëlle vauquelin and not captain gwenaëlle baudin, ) specifically address the anchor, and mine is also somewhat unique among them. But is there a particular thing that you're interested in?

[ difficult to say "i don't know how to have a conversation about this and not have it rip me up inside" and not sound like an idiot. "if we keep talking about opinions i'll say something bad and you'll leave and i'll have to go be alone in the library pretending books are a good enough substitute for a real conversation." equally heinous, very overdramatic. ness reaches to touch the notes, tracing a fingertip over and over one word while she thinks, weighs her answer to gwen's actual question. ]

I want to know this place's history so well, no one will know that I'm not from here.

[ it's the most honest she's yet been about her goal, and she glances over at gwenaëlle, bracing for a negative response. ]

( huh.

it's not that it's a bad goal. or even that she thinks it isn't attainable, or that it isn't a good idea— it surprises her, that's clear, but her surprise sharpens into interest, not displeasure. into curiosity. the idea of someone coming in with that clear of a plan so fast is interesting, though she supposes it doesn't suggest anything spectacular about what ennaris had left behind.

so she doesn't want to be too clumsy with her curiosity, but it's palpable. )

Possible, ( after a slight pause, ) though from what the research suggests, you may eventually have to cut your arm off if you mean to commit fully outside of the Gallows.

( the thoughtful way she says it makes it clear: she doesn't mean this to be offputting. she's thinking out loud, gaming it out. )

[ the anticipated scoffing never comes, and ness slowly relaxes, avoiding gwenaëlle's eyes less. she wraps a hand around her arm, and tries to imagine life without it. ]

Well, [ slowly, ] reading books might get a little harder. And tying my laces. But anything can be adapted to, with enough time.

[ though by her tone, she's not quite certain of that. ]

I may yet need both arms for the war, so it's a moot point for now. Something I'll have to contend with at the end of all of this, though, so I appreciate the warning. Perhaps I should start training the other arm.

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