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FORM: Sending Crystal
SENDER: Thranduil
RECIPIENT: Everyone in Kirkwall
WHAT: Thranduil graciously eats humble pie.
WHEN: Today! (12th Wintermarch)
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: Following the fire.

This past Friday, there was a small fire in the section of the tower reserved for the Division heads, specifically my own office and private quarters. Thanks to the efforts of several, including Ser Coupe, no one was injured, and our greatest losses were a few pieces of furniture.

The blaze was my fault. I failed twice, in not properly banking the fire and checking the new wood for dampness caused by the logs being outside during a freeze, and also in not informing the staff that I would be out for the week.

Given the recent cold and what measures we take to remedy it, I politely request that no one repeat my foolishness, stay attentive, and review Gallows evacuation plans in case of a fire. Those that wish to speak with me will find me in the library until my office is cleaned, likely by the middle of next week.

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Growing careless in our advanced age are we?

[This has the pang of bullshit about it Thranduil.]

Very. When I am infirm, who do you think might be charged with spooning mashed turnips into my slack mouth?

Is that not the benefit of Orlesian nobility? You have so much time to make an impression upon them that they might care for you into your dotage.

I beg you cut my throat if they ever make an amusement of me, Morrigan.

[ a sigh. ]

We were careless on Gwenaëlle's birthday. A maid was clever and reporting back to her father, he put the pieces together, and sent his man after me.

He is an old man, and I pity him. I wish I felt something else.

You've more than earned that mercy.

[More than most might give either rifter or elf.]

I almost envy you that. [Experience has taught her that when it comes to Flemeth she can't let go. Pity would be simpler.] To have her trust betrayed in such way and your own however, 'tis no small thing now she lives her own life.

Then to you I entrust my death. Take care that someone else does not steal it from you, yes?

[ he has a long, long road to walk before he can leave thedas without his work being called unfinished. ]

It is a hollow feeling, and her father is Orlesian, and attempting to keep her safe in the only way he knows how. You do not blame a dog for biting.

-but you put it down if it continues to do so. She will live her own life. His requests, if they had been delivered another way, could have been agreed to with much less fuss.

You make it sound as if your death is a thing very separate from you. [Which-- which might not be outside the realm of possibility. There's her mother, however she survived if she takes the Tale of the Champion at their face value, if she considers how old Thranduil is, how little she knows of him.] 'Twould be in safe hands.

[That she does mean. Sincere. Soft as she rarely is but with the chosen few who've earned it of her.]

You said it yourself: her father is Orlesian. A man of means, a man with a name. A man who likely had many plans for his daughter who would be his sole heir. There are those who believe they know best, and seldom take it well when shown otherwise.

The flesh is weak. It can be repaired, it has been, but for the worst wounds-- those inflicted by unclean things. But the spirit, the spirit will remain, will never fade. Different flesh can be crafted to house it. Here, there is no one with that skill, so my death will be that. Who knows what will happen to the essence of me?

[ to be struck from the record, to find its way back to mandos' halls? who can know. he trust morrigan with inflicting it, if he cannot do it himself. if the blight somehow takes root in him. if he is captured beyond hope of escape or outlasting.

she is a good woman. from the same branch as tauriel, if carved for a different purpose. ]

In Arda, I could have made her the queen. I would not have had to prove my worth. Nor do I think him entitled to it, still.

I thank you for your counsel.

Unclean - I take it you mean the undead and worse. Darkspawn? Yet you went down into Vimmark. I know that two rifters have met their ends for certain here yet both were human, though if they go to the Fade...if that would happen to you-- A pity the secret of Uthenera has been lost, that might have been the option since the Dalish love you well.

[Impossible to test but somewhere there are ancient elves, there's the knowledge of the Mortalitasi that might be plucked and bent to suit, twisted for a purpose. If she flinches at the thought then it's because living in the skin of another discomforts when it was near her own but it can be done.

She knows that. Has the proof of it if not the way to apply it.

Morrigan won't live forever but the eluvians will outlast her, and she'd trust them to few hands. If there are pages to be torn out, to be hidden away? To him.]

Even her poetry went under a false name, what would she make of being a queen? In all the tales I ever heard of those married to power, there was never a shortfall of grief. [When a secret is sobbed out in your lap, words that could destroy? You hold it in your heart tight enough you could make a fist with it.]

I was curious at what I might see. And I have always been far more tolerant of the dusk than most of my fellows. Galadriel would burn the Deep Roads clean, if she had half her strength, and I would support her in it. This place is ill.

[ all their troubles circle back to it, in the end. ]

And I love the Dalish. Their ways remind me far too much of my people for them not to. Freedom or death is a powerful creed. I wish only that they needn't wallow as they do. Let them build new things. I do not think I could ever idle away in such a sleep.

[ he will find a way. they only need access to the wellspring that will allow them to draw properly on their gifts. then they may do what they set out to do. ]

Very little, I hope. We did things our own way, in my Halls. Behold what Thedas has made of me, laugh at my foolishness for wishing to prove to her father than I am worthy of her. She is not a beast, to be bought or sold or traded from man to man.

Fire alone will not cleanse that place. I have gone down into them, down into the Dead Trenches...the Old Gods sleep there, and though I do not doubt your power, none of you are quite what you were, are you? Should the Blight touch you? Should it be her? Tell her to find a poison that will speed her on her way should she fall.

[If this is the most serious Thranduil has heard Morrigan, then there's good reason. There was a thing in there that left Leliana weeping. A thing that still churns Morrigan's stomach. Some fates are worse for some than others.]

The Dalish lost Arlathan, lost Halamshiral. They live in this world where none learn a lesson including them since the mages do not learn what happens when another is allowed to hold a leash when example was given not once but twice to them yet still did they not offer it up in droves? Lambs to the damned slaughter? They might travel, but they do so with half their heads turned to look over their shoulder. [That's between the two of them since Morrigan is a human who does need to keep them on side but learn a thing.]

When much of this world believes in a Maker and Andraste, with Andraste betrayed by her mortal husband who grew jealous, perhaps there is a lesson somewhere in all of that. Even my own mother's tale ended with death though at least the man was the one to do the dying there.

Not fire, [ he states, calm and firm. ] But Light.

[ the rest of the matter is in galadriel's hands. she is the eldest and therefore strongest of all of them, and seemingly the only motivated one (her cousins, too wrapped up in one another to think of the whole of the elvhen, though perhaps that is best) besides himself. and how many roadblocks there have been in his path, limitations he is not aware of until he crashes headfirst into them.

is he running out of time?

thranduil notes her serious nature and gives it the weight it deserves in his mind. ]

There are lessons in everything. Imagine Gwenaëlle, a prophet. How well would she take to it, hm? I wonder what the-- what was she called-- the Herald. If that was my dear lady instead, and living still.

[ a moment of silence between them. ]

Will you tell me your mother's story again?

Darkspawn are not so simple as you may think. There are still archdemons. Grey Wardens are what stand between us and them.

[Not even Thranduil will pray that particular truth from behind her lips. There is loyalty owed to two men, one dead, one living, and Morrigan might cast the rest of them aside as fools who've put them all at risk coasting on the legacy and good graces belonging to others, not themselves--

But there is always Denerim. Fort Drakon. And that she cannot forget.]

Let us recall that the Hero is as dead as the Herald, the Champion so long missing that I suspect we shall find bare bones if we find aught. You would have greater scrutiny, more shadows for the blades and whispers. [And those are close enough now.]

There was a time when Flemeth, young and beautiful, lived penniless with naught to her name but a bard named Osen; as with beautiful women, another man lusted for her, this one a lord named Conobar. Upon Flemeth's suggestion, she would be given to Conobar as his wife and Osen would receive the coin he so desperately needed.

Conobar lied and murdered Osen out in the field for he had not the coin to pay for this bargain, a foul man indeed was he. 'Twas the spirits who came to Flemeth, telling her of Osen's fate, and she swore vengeance. Not for love, no, she refused to be wife to a dishonourable man. The spirits listened to her pleas and aided her in slaying Conobar though his allies gave chase across the lands where she eventually escaped to the Wilds.

'Twas in the Wilds when Flemeth turned to the demon, and the demon made her strong. This is the true tale that Flemeth told to me, not the one you shall hear recorded elsewhere or that some other fool might tell to you.

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