crystal. open.

[kecharitomene]

FORM: Crystal.
SENDER: Galatea
RECIPIENT: All y'all.
WHAT: A PLEA FOR ASSISTANCE.
WHEN: Current.
WHERE: The Gallows.
NOTES: The letters are from traumatised mage kids.

( The voice over the crystals is low, musical and Orlesian in accent; the kind of accent you find out in the sticks, a mixture of different regions and none of them terribly polished. )

Hallo, strangers, ( all friendliness, ) I am very new here so maybe I don't know who to ask, exactly- you have lots of people who know all about the books, I would like to borrow one! A little. ( slyly: ) I'll return you in good condition. You read to me some letters, you write down my reply for me, and in return -

We can work something out, no?

Comments

[thunderproof]

I don't mind if I'm returned lightly used, to be honest. ❰ is this flirting? who's to say. ❱ What can I do for you, goodlady?

[kecharitomene]

( eyyy.

promptly: )

Read letters and write my reply. I don't know if these are in Trade or Orlesian-

[thunderproof]

Right, you said — I got distracted by my great librarian joke, my bad. I can do that if they're in Trade, but I've yet to learn Orlesian, so I'd be no help there. Show me the letters and we'll see what I can do for you!

[kecharitomene]

Where will I find you? ( GOOD DEAL. )

[thunderproof]

The Gallows library!

❰ a looooong pause, which, despite their being separated by, presumably, quite a distance, still manages to feel tense. ❱

I suppose I should warn you, I have a wyrmling — a baby dragon — with me.

[kecharitomene]

( mmmmmmmm )

Why?

[thunderproof]

There's a long answer I could get into, I suppose, but really what it comes down to is: He's as good as my child, and I love him. He's been here two months now and never hurt anyone.

❰ there's a note of defensiveness in there, but also just... resigned exhaustion. yes, have your freak out, she'll be here when you're done. ❱

[kecharitomene]

Well, each to their own.

( she does sound like she's not getting up and moving, but it's affably said. )

[thunderproof]

❰ y'all are all cowards, for real. ❱

Mmm. ❰ if that sounds a little passive aggressive that's cuz it is. however — ❱ He's not always with me, if you'd prefer to wait until I can drop him off in my room.

[kecharitomene]

I've someone for the trade letters, now.

( kindly. the way you talk to simpletons and crazy people. )

[thunderproof]

❰ the sound of someone throwing up their hands. ❱

Wonderful. I'm happy for you. Enjoy your letters.

❰ honestly what's bothering her more is she'd gotten curious and now she'll never know what was in the letters. ❱

[kecharitomene]

Thank you! I will.

( you can't say she isn't courteous. )

action; s'up roomie

[earthbones]

[Maybe now is the time to actually do more than skulk past the person she shares the room with like the new cat brought into the home--]

I can read and write. [The first words said with any sort of intent directed Galatea's way out of Brónach's mouth, a good start.] Already doing exchanges with folk as is.

Unless the question I have counts as part of it.

[kecharitomene]

( Galatea, currently sprawled on her bed on her side of the room (charmingly decorated with the artwork that had accompanied those letters - where did they get all this red paint from? is Solas running out in Skyhold because small hands have been stealing it from him?), props up on one elbow Burt Reynolds* style to beam at her roommate- )

What's your question?




( * you know )

[earthbones]

[Well it's not as if Brónach's side is much better, not since the hunting trip before the weather soured left her with teeth, bones, and pelts all to be dealt with when this city decides the weather isn't something to weep over with the tears freezing on collective cheeks.

Honestly it's much more charming than the last shared rooming experience. (Like calls to like after all.)]

The paintings - are they paintings? Skyrim liked tapestries or wall carvings - what's the whole deal with that?

[kecharitomene]

My pictures!

( Her fondness is real, immediate and apparent - the warm glance towards them doesn't really match the content of most of the pictures, but nevermind that. One of them, the sweetest of them, is a wobbly recreation of one of the unfinished pieces in the rotunda, and she presses her fingertip to it: )

The little ones I left in Skyhold, they gave them to me. This one arrived only a day or two ago, I like it very much. She wanted me to see a lovely thing she'd seen - they're good babies. I think they'll forget me,

( easily, calmly, )

in time. I'll have all these, though. One day maybe I will be very old, ( like it's a joke, like the idea of Galatea being very old is inherently funny, ) and they will have become very big and powerful and important, and I'll have this and I'll say, that very important person, I remember her with her hair full of mud and her hands full of paint.

[earthbones]

Children remember.

[Cheering when her arrow punched clean through Grelod. Constance cowering but even now the children in Riften smile when her shadow slips past them. Smiles pass faster than falling shadow on this face but sometimes they stick, the picks jammed deep in a lock that you try to pull free but can't.]

If you did them a kindness, they remember that. All the more if they didn't have much of it. It's strange, the things kids remember. Give them a coin to go by supper once when you've stopped through [the things a woman does when she recognises hunger, fear, cold in a face smaller than her own when she's waiting for someone to show up for hours in the street] and they'll smile every single time you pass even when every other face turns or spits at your feet.

[Time is split in three for her, it's easier to say all this to such a young face remembering her own feral days as she uncurls more.] What's very old? It's as old as you feel. Some days I feel older than any of my ancestors ever lived to be. Better than that full of blood and bitterness, fighting the same wars again. Probably bigger wishes for them than their own parents ever had for them. [Not that it's a bad thing but what did her own ever want? Her. Alive. Her mind her own. Her own path. Does one out of three count?]

[kecharitomene]

Their parents maybe could be found, ( in an immediate and very real diversion, the thought occurring suddenly off what Bronach says— ) they are little mages, you see, taken from their parents. There's no dreaming for those children, I don't think. Parents must mourn.

But everything will be different.

( A project. )

[earthbones]

[More than she would like, Brónach's been struck deep enough to hit bone. An arrow or blade, the clamped jaws of a sabre cat that shook, a dragon tooth in the meat of her back once when it might have burnt her spirit away. So she knows her face pulls tight the same way. That all the breath comes rattling out as if her lungs were crushed between her ribs.]

No one told me they take them. No one said-- I told them that people come in the night with a face almost the same as yours to drag someone out, sleeping. We never see them.

[When is a person living and dead? When the Thalmor touch them and rip out their living heart, their memory.]

It'd be hard. But worth it, I think you have the stomach. And I have it to read.

[kecharitomene]

You'll hear people talk about rebel mages,

( after a moment, running her fingers absently over the pages that she can't read—but that little familiar hands had touched and held and pressed ink to, entrusted their secrets to, to slip all this way and be murmured into her own pointed ears. )

They got a lot to rebel against.

[earthbones]

And you cast your lot with them.

[Some would side with the Dunmer in Windhelm when abuse was hurled at them to land same as a slap, accused of being spies. It's hard not to think about Delphine though. Delphine who never looks at her the same since she wouldn't take up her bow and her voice to do as she asked (she asked too much, she asked, and asked, it was enough) she had need of blades not a Blade.

It's harder to picture this one in the dark of a temple forgotten with prophecy carved into the wall but perhaps that should be left behind again anyway.]

Funny, the things people don't want to tell the stranger about the customs of the country. Don't be rude to our honoured dead but not a word about stealing babes from arms. How much worse? [Does it sound like an offer of more? Brónach learnt her shadowmarks in Skyrim, and somehow the way her mouth moves in the offer of protection same as a hand draws two overlapping circles inside a diamond in the empty air, all without thinking.]

[kecharitomene]

( It's strange—she's right, but Galatea has never thought of it in so many words, not quite like that. Every step she's taken has made perfect sense in the moment that she takes it, but she thinks of little past each forward motion; the moment she decided no, and all that followed after.

She thinks of that no, and did not see the yes buried in it, in little hands clasping hers, kisses pressed to little foreheads, promising them that the Maker had loved them. The Maker had trusted them with their gifts of magic, and Galatea would not see them destroyed for it, not ever, she promised— )

I never went to a Circle. It wasn't the work that I did.

( Benoit, so brave, showing her his knuckles. She looks at Brónach, head tilted, eyes strange. )

Before now, they aren't places mages leave.

[earthbones]

Were you a—no. You don't have them…

[Working out the right word for what she wants to ask takes longer than Brónach is comfortable with but it leaves her with this: Galatea is not a mage but she must be Chantry of some capacity to be so involved, since that'd be the only way. Perhaps the kind people don't see.]

You have priests here, or something close enough, I haven't gone inspecting things like that but are there militant priests? Ones who take up weapons with their holy orders? Not like the Templars, Vigilant doesn't sit right for a Templar; there's a god of mercy and merciful forbearance, the Vigilants in his name have a saying: Stendarr's mercy be upon you, for the Vigil has none to spare.

[A mercy to look over children taken, stolen, not belonging to something that only seeks to shape them in another image. How wrong of it to twist little minds. How right to free them of it.

When will she sleep after this reading and writing? She's gone days before, she can do days again.]

Even without the cage, leaving isn't always a choice. Take even that illusion away and what is the world? The lie you tell yourself that you might sleep without the void hissing in your ear?

[kecharitomene]

( They are friends now—Galatea has decided, in the space of this conversation, it is so terribly easy to become her friend and she accepts the partings as quietly—and so it is a hard question, with a hard answer. Simpler, if it weren't asked at all. Easy to lie in a moment, but maybe hard to lie forever.

Galatea says, simply, )

I was the void.

( Not proud, not ashamed, just plain. )

I would take the lies away, and then they would answer my questions. I regret,

( carefully, thoughtfully, )

that I missed the lies told to me. I have... ( She searches for the word; finds it in the mouth of a dead woman giving sermons, and says, with quiet satisfaction, ) ...redressed that.

[earthbones]

[Distasteful things are done in the dark, in the space between one heartbeat and the next. And yet hasn't Brónach found her families each time in these acts? In these forbidden spaces?]

There are people who want all that they can take from you, who come in the guise of if not friendship then purpose. That the need is great, that it can't be denied. [Delphine. The Night Mother hasn't whispered her name but she waits, she waits. Even Astrid in the end had opened up to accepting truth, had simply allowed acceptance of what the world was into her heart.]

The Void is still powerful. It's nothingness but the Dread Father claims it [is it near reverence, or as close as she gets when it isn't the earth, the green] and things not good nor evil but that which cannot die that come from there.

[What a dangerous thing to say but this girl she likes, she truly likes and to be a thing someone else would wield, to be put in certain places.

We know, a note had said. I know, a Bosmer thinks now.]

Sometimes you do what you have to, because no one else will do what's right for you when it's not going to be right for them.

not here

[limier]

[ what a good time to update her WRITTEN NOTES about the voices of everyone who replies ]

not here

[kecharitomene]

( just u fuckin wait ho )

[hearher]

What type of books are you interested in?

[kecharitomene]

( with a laugh, ) None?

[hearher]

All right. What were you hoping to do with the book? Is it just to have something to read or...?

[kecharitomene]

( patiently repeating, slower: )

I need to have some letters read, and then my reply written down for me. You see?

[hearher]

Oh! I...

[Oh maker he's going to die of embarrassment now.] I understand. I can help with that! Unless you found someone more qualified.

[kecharitomene]

Do you read Orlesian? Because I maybe need someone who can read Orlesian.

[hearher]

It's been a while, but I used to read it all of the time.

My, uh, my mother was Orlesian.

[kecharitomene]

Then I'll speak with you if some of these are Orlesian! I don't know, you see.

( because she can't fuckin read )

[hearher]

I can take a look and sort through the different languages to start with.

[kecharitomene]

If there are any Bronach can't read, ( clarifying. )

[hearher]

Oh yeah. That makes sense. Just let me know.

[kecharitomene]

Merci.

[hearher]

Je t'en prie. [He offers, though his pronunciation isn't the best. His mother might have been Orlesian, but he was raised in the Free Marches.]

[universal_charm]

What sort of books are you looking for?

_{[ Because he has some, but if you mean them for children or polite company, he has quite a few that not acceptable for such audiences, ahem. ]}

[kecharitomene]

Merci, none.

[universal_charm]

_{[ A pause because he was sure she had asked for one, unless - ]}

Oh, did you mean that you want someone who knows about books and not a book itself?

[kecharitomene]

Ouais.

[universal_charm]

Ah, well, if you still need someone like that, I am someone like that, mademoiselle.

[kecharitomene]

I think I have it in hand now, merci.