crystal;

[foxsays]

FORM: Sending crystal
SENDER: Araceli Bonaventura
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Offering advanced parkour lessons and trying to organise a shindig
WHEN: Now
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Threadjacking encouraged. A few notices have been left around the Gallows to sign-up for lessons.

Inquisition, now that we're settled in Kirkwall I come to you with two very exciting propositions. As some of you know, I taught how to climb and run the walls and battlements of Skyhold, how to fall from such heights safely but alas this was not as it was at home when Skyhold was so contained. But here we are in Kirkwall! I can truly teach you how to leap from building to building if your desire and to dive into the waters from buildings and from the rigging of a ship. Of course, we start small so as not to injure your good self but if that prospect sounds intriguing, please come find me. I am Araceli Bonaventura, at your service. I'm either working at the Gallows or by the docks or you might happen to look up.

The second is a thing to celebrate and I could say that I do it as leader of the naval projects but truly? I do it as someone who loves cooking and seafood, to finally be back by the water after so long removed from it. Tell me, Inquisition, what are your favourite seafood dishes? Your favourite meals from Antiva or Rivain or places such as that? Because I thought it might be an idea to have a cookout by the waves towards the end of the month, say, the twenty-second? Everyone is welcome if they are a fan of good food and good times among friends.

[Also it's her birthday but since they don't really do birthdays that way back home, what better thing to do than have a fun time with people that have all certainly earned it?]

Comments

[foxsays]

Then I shall make haste.

[Aaaaaand an appropriate amount of time later, a much more casually dressed Araceli is beneath a window on a sending crystal with a horse she absolutely borrowed with permission because she's a girl with manners, a smile, and a silver tongue she isn't averse to using as often as she needs to. (Which is most of the time because a girl tends to need a great many things to get through life.)]

Madame de Cedoux? [To the horse:] If you would not eat my hair? I would appreciate it.

[ipseite]

( The window swings open, and Petrana's head emerges - )

It will be only a moment. Hold him, ( with a gesture to the horse, ) and be ready to drop the rein. You, ( carelessly, ) will know when.

( She disappears back into the building; the sound of warm and quiet conversation, of coins changing hands, and the heavy drag of furniture being moved to clear her a path. Araceli will hear her before she sees, but it is absolutely impossible to miss: Petrana comes out of the window at a dead run, vaulting it with the ease of having practised that precise move a hundred, a hundred thousand times, tumbling in the air in a perfect arc, shoes abandoned so that it's her bare feet that land nimble on the saddle as she takes the reins and wheels the horse in the opposite direction, riding hard without dropping.

At the other end of the street, she wheels again, lowering her body, taking the reins in one hand and preparing -

with her momentum and the horse's behind her, she launches herself toward the overhanging ledge of the window she'd come out of, catching her breath fast when the impact drives it out of her. She scrambles back inside, then reappears with her shoes in hand, her hair coming loose around her face from the tightly braided chignon she wears it in. )

Most of all I wish to learn not to require the horse.

[foxsays]

[Giving a slight bow, it's time to threaten the horse because Araceli generally doesn't trust horses since the last horse she had was a swindled Tevinter horse that might have been eaten or possessed by demons at some point.] If this lady is injured because of you, I will have you chopped into so many bits and I will feed you to people who would not appreciate horse but would cook you so well they would love you. [So, you know, Orlesian nobles.

It's not much of a threat, not really, it's Araceli after all and she's too excited to see what Petrana's going to do that required a horse and a window, and then suddenly her heart is in her hammering, her breath is leaving her--

Just when you thought you couldn't be more attracted to women, Araceli thinks very distantly as it all slows down a great deal, everything a dull roar like it is when she falls from the very highest of buildings when in fact she knows just how quick this all is, yet here you are.

The reins slide through her fingers, Araceli lets out a whooping laugh of delight and realises how giddy and breathless she is when she does it.

Somewhere, softly, in the distance, the dulcet tones Take My Breath Away swells, everything has that gentle eighties fade to it.]

Madame, that was-- Maldito. [Excuse her, she's very excited, fanning her face and beaming up in delight so the tone implies the meaning hopefully.] I can absolutely teach that.

[Where and how would a lady learn to do that? More importantly, more naggingly, why would a lady learn to do that? Softly, softly.]

[ipseite]

( Flush with her success, Petra beams - then waves off, coming down from the building in the proper way, indoors and down stairs. It's only a moment before she's back in front of Araceli, slipped back into her shoes and tucking her hair behind her ears.

Why would a lady learn to do that? Not for nothing. )

I am a strong swimmer, also, ( she says, still pleased with herself. )

[foxsays]

[Ladies swimming isn't so strange. In Castileos. Where not swimming is odd and unnatural but knowing nothing about the geography of Petrana's home Araceli can't say anything and clears her throat so she doesn't sound like an idiot.]

Swimming is good, it means I can teach you to go from the tops of the buildings or ships into the water. Easier than hay and I don't need to keep skulking around the stables trying to charm stablehands. [Or outright stealing what she needs and stashing it around the Gallows and having to answer the question of 'why is there a cart of hay here' with 'because I say there is a cart of hay here'.]

[ipseite]

The ocean is much more convenient-- ( lightly, amused. The stories that she could tell -

Well.

They would be very telling. Perhaps not today. Instead; )

My lands were two day's ride from the nearest port city- a day, if you rode hard. It was always so fascinating to see the people, come and go and come and go.

[foxsays]

There is nothing the ocean has not seen, I think that it will swallow this too. [Easily, smiling.

Kirkwall's waters have had far worse in them than one young woman teaching another valuable life skills.]

Until Thedas, I hadn't been to a place where I couldn't see or hear or smell the sea, and I was in a place by the docks, and I would go down and play cards or dice with the sailors on watch when I wasn't getting word of my father. The taverns would spill out into the widest part of our streets and you knew everything if you went there. They raised me as much as my parents and my teachers.

[ipseite]

I cannot but envy you that, in part.

( In her mouth, shaped by her diction, the softness of her - they're words that could so easily be tritely condescending. Quaint echoing around their edges, a verbal pat on the bottom for a good girl--

they are not. Petrana has seen enough, lived enough; it is not the dismissal that it might have been. It is thoughtful, and meant respectfully (in part, expecting Araceli to know which, to hear in her voice that she knows what not to wish on herself and not on her new friend, either), and conscious of how much yet they might teach one another.

She remembers Araceli's cheeks burning in her room, and thinks yes. She has things to teach, too, as well as learn. )

As a girl, I only saw. As a woman, though, I spoke.

[foxsays]

It's a good life. Luckier than some but luck is a strange thing.

[She listens for a trap, doesn't hear one. There were so few rules and so many she liked to break just because she could and the consequences were hers to bear, and in that? Well, there are things she would like if she'd been noble but even more she'd have hated.

Araceli wants her freedom, she'd kick and scream and claw for it.

There at the end, that echo of Leandra that lands heavily in her even with Leandra being younger than Petrana certainly. Leandra wanting to go out to see it all herself, Leandra wanting change, Leandra--

She swallows the thoughts. She doesn't want to get distracted when it's veering so close to when she's going to miss her.]

You spoke. [That-- she needs a moment, she's more used to people not doing that.]

[ipseite]

( For all the good it did, she thinks.

How many times did she stab her finger at Marius, speak her mind, and how many times did it matter - how many times did he listen, and how many did he simply lock the door and do as he always intended to? How much didn't she say, knowing better-- )

It benefits no one, ( a moment later, ) to willfully ignore opportunity.

Even so small an opportunity as to speak with someone whose perspective one might never hear again.

[foxsays]

[Swallowing hurts.

Longer in Thedas than with the guard but this could be another room, another country, a queen's hands holding hers enough that Araceli almost curls hers around empty air.

(Leandra looked ridiculous in Araceli's clothes, all of them did at first.)]

There are some who don't know what one of those is even when it calls their name and tugs their sleeve. The docks are ever-changing here too, if there's a place where everyone has to go for a little while? It's the docks.

[You hear all sorts there. Which is exactly why she threw herself out of the Gallows and into a little flat at the first opportunity.]

[ipseite]

Upon a throne, it is easy to believe that this is from where comes everything. It is not so, I think you understand. People move like the earth does, slow and steady and from beneath.

( Listening in ballrooms will get you far, but you will never see the blade that lodges between your shoulders if those are the only voices you hear. )

Belief makes all the difference. It can't simply be declared.

( It can, however, be guided. )

[foxsays]

Even glass and stone are worn away by the tide. Set a statue against the ocean's face and see what one is still there in the end.

[This she understands. A careful glance about because she hasn't made it so far in Thedas by being careless after all but people see what they want to see.

So what does Petrana see?]

It has to be, sometimes. [A little sadder than she would like but this is how life is because things aren't ideal and there are times you have to say it very loudly when you're stumbling over yourself losing your way or getting obstinate people to do things when they make your flesh crawl.]