middaeg | (OPEN) It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones

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(OPEN) It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones

Who: Solas & Iramaat, Solas & Petra, Solas & an open prompt!
When: mid May!
Where: Undermael’s library, and the Outer City!
What: Fae transformation research and the Out of the City quest! Ruminations on healthcare and class divisions!
Warnings: Nothing that isn’t Aef-typical!

i. heal (maiuril 18-25)
[It’s an ethical obligation: know the sickness for what it is, and, if it is within your means, help heal it.

Serious, immersed in his assigned work, Solas has been providing injections (and sometimes counsel) to the afflicted and forgotten of the Outer City since the early morning. He set out at dawn, dressed in plain Coven robes, matched now with the generic face mask and gloves handed out by the dozens to the volunteers.

The musky summer sun hangs directly overhead, exacerbating the humidity and the acrid, sick smell suffocating the Coven healers’ station. He’s been told it’s his break, so he leaves out the back, through a flap door. Outside, he pulls down his mask, and inhales the cooler air. He’s worked up a sheen of sweat, and the relief is palpable.

When he lifts his tired eyes again, they happen to fix on a newcomer. His thoughts have had a full day to rattle around inside his mind, and he feels compelled to speak them. In subdued undertone, he remarks, in lieu of a greeting,]

The healers here do good work. And they do so weighed down by futility. No matter how many they treat here today, come tomorrow the number of infected will have increased.

ii. wildcard
why not! solas spends the first ~two weeks deep in research, and then over the remainder of the month spends a lot of time volunteering and building links within the outer city. i have other plans i’d like to put into action and thoughts i’d like to toss around, though… so please feel free to hit me up with anything or reach out to me with ideas or requests at

shroomish c:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[A new course for the day has been set - one that promises to be no less intellectually enriching. He sets aside the evidence of the work he’s been doing to the far side of his desk. Not one to waste time, he puts down his watch and sets about gathering a collection of the few promising books he can find on the fae – their biology, but also their culture and customs.

He’s considering whether he’ll have time make a beeline for the other side of the library (where he believes the section on Transmutation is located) when he spies Petrana arriving.]

Madame de Lamorraine. [He bows in greeting.] I hope you had no difficulty finding me?

[As he straightens, his gaze lingers on her new ears.]

( her new ears are prominently visible, though it seems unlikely to have been purposeful beyond that it is purposeful she pins up her hair—more simply than the last time he saw her, for want of a maid, but tight and neat and nothing that anyone would sniff at, had they not seen her more elaborately styled. they draw to fine points, though not so large as his own; the overall shape more a dewdrop than a blade. in the simpler dress she wears in place of the heavy, wintry velvet she'd arrived in, the glimmers she'd alluded to in their conversation are visible at her throat and her wrists,

so that she seems more at home rather than less is something, in itself, to turn over. )

Not at all—I have had some business in this quarter, so must make its better acquaintance. And you are rather distinct in your way.

( it's the shiny bald head, mainly, though she thinks it's interesting how plainly he dresses, to contrast with the way he carries himself. a lifetime ago, nothing she might have noticed enough to remark upon, but...familiar, now. enough to note, if not to challenge him on.

she has wrapped innocuousness about herself like a shawl; who is she to say someone else might not? )

Am I? [The corner of his mouth twitches up.]

Few would say so, in the world I come from.

[Her ears, her glittering - It’s fascinating. And it’s a frightening prospect: having one’s body transform without willing it to happen. Change further, more than they already have, beyond what has already been taken from them. It is not like shapeshifting magic. Not like Cole, who subconsciously willed himself to take a human form. And it is not like the elves of his time, or himself, who took bodies in a conscious, ritual manner.

It is more like being bound and forced to change against ones will. Given time to dwell on it, his heart has begun to flutter with anxiety at her predicament, and what may become of her nature and spirit if it is twisted along with her body. He is relieved they are both logical minds who will reason through their problems, rather than sinking into a morass of fears.]

I have prepared some reading materials where we might make a start. [He steps back, and gestures to a chair he’s set up for her on the opposite side of the desk to his own.]

Please, by all means – sit.

( well, if he's going to say so—petrana considers him, smiling, close-mouthed, as he says few would say so, agrees mildly, )

I expect that's so.

( she expects that's knowingly done, that's what she expects, but in that they are birds of a plain, dull feather and it's not a challenge so much as an acknowledgment. she is at least in part what she appears to be, but to her eye what he appears to be is no more an accident.

sweeping her skirt beneath her when she sits, she leans forward at the table to instead study the titles he's assembled, the relevant subjects. the biology of the fae seems like the most appropriate place to begin, so that's what she reaches for at first: to start with the building blocks, and move out. )

You know, I don't doubt that such magic might exist, in Sulleciel, but it is certainly beyond the ken of any witch I've yet encountered. To change so, that is. The spells that I relied upon were always far simpler—hearth magic. Amusements for, for children. Well, and fire.

( if in doubt, arson. )

[He takes his place opposite, noting she’s elected to start with biology. Accordingly, he himself reaches to take up The Monster-Folk of Aefenglom (by Iselmyr Barnett Grey). For the classifications, and because it seems useful to have reference as to how the monsters of this land are seen through a human lens.

Her words chime with his previous train of thought, so he speaks it.]

Shapeshifting was a favoured art of my people, in the ancient times when magic was freer.

[He opens the book, as he lapses into an explanation in a low, musing voice.]

My people were not content to keep but one shape – our magic was fluid, ever-shifting, and so too were we. Once we changed our bodies with the same ease with which we changed our minds. We wished to swoop as owls, prowl as wolves… That was a long time ago. Only traces of that art lingers.

[He glances up at her with a small smile.] Now those surviving techniques are said to be hedge magic.

( there's an admiring wistfulness to the way that she listens to his descriptions of historic magic—in part an earnest fascination with the things that he says, and in part a tempting distraction in something more distant from herself than the prospect of her own shifted species. it is a good deal easier to think on something so removed from herself, and

that alone prompts her to look back down at her book, but she is still smiling. )

A true point of similarity—'hedge magic' is a not uncommon term for surviving witchcraft. So much of the artistry of it all has been lost to fires and to time. The little wonders that I could master seemed...terribly small. And smaller now still.

( though it is interesting, perhaps, how readily and easily she deprecates her ability. how harmless she positions herself to be. )

[He’s glad that the magic survives still – it’s a fitting testament and memorial to his people, and the lost witches of Sulleciel as well, when it might otherwise be entirely forgotten. He’s not inclined to deprecate its new practitioners, either. He knows they are among the most formidable and inquisitive of the new era of mages – smaller though their magic may be.]

Perhaps hedge magic is as the stone pillars of a sturdy ruin.

[He folds his hands on the open book, pursuing their tangent for the moment.] The rest of the building may have crumbled away, but the structure of it remains. And it has proved strong enough to withstand the fires of suppression, and the storms of contempt.

Something to respect.

Well said,

( after a brief pause, and several deeply conflicting responses that she is by now steady enough not to show beyond that pause. she taps her fingertips lightly against the open book before her, remembering, )

I do it a disservice, I admit, in—overlooking the great strides made in recent years. The work that we have done. The possibilities offered by errors of the ego, and—doubt just as I say. To think of it as small and only that.

My husband makes of himself a myth every time his sword alights with flame, it is...

( her jaw works for a moment. )

I of all people should not forget the power of perception. Perspective.

[There appears a glint in his eye: the work that we have done suggests organised research, though that conflicts with what he has been told of Sulleciel. Interesting.

Yet his attention is moreso taken by her description of her husband. It’s a fine descriptor for some posturing, grandiose young marquis, known by his wife as a fool. That he hears it and remembers the young false-gods of his world is entirely a projection on his part.

Still – there’s much to be wary of, in the men of power who spin their own myths. He leaves it alone.]

Great strides, Madame de Lamorraine? I am curious.

for petra

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for iramaat

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