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:

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( 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.

Well, that I—that I know any of this to speak on it to you at all. I fancy myself something of an authority, but that alone is a great stride, I think.

( if looked at, a certain way. she considers how to put it, half-turning more toward him in her seat, one elbow resting on the table and her hands coming up to illustrate her thoughts, however loosely. )

Exile rather focuses one. In my experience. Marius hardly has time to—I wish that we had his teacher, still, but he doesn't speak of her. He teaches to me something and I record it. That will be our book, one day. I hope. I would like that to be part of our legacy, I think.

( she had hoped to teach their daughter from it. it is a thought, a memory she doesn't allow to take root. )

I learn very well, I think, but he can...extrapolate in ways that I cannot. I'm sure much of what he's creating is, in truth, rediscovery, but we have nothing to compare it to yet, so it's quite impressive. He doesn't have time for dedicated scholarship, where I have often found myself with an excess of it, so—I hope to be offering sanctuary. Or I hoped, before I was here. I hoped to be offering sanctuary to any practitioners of magic within the borders of the empire. And then if there are any to hear that, and come, who knows what we could do?

[She had mentioned her court years were behind her, but she did not mention exile. Clearly, she’s taken her exile as the opportunity it is: to act in defiance, and out of sight, of the powers that have divested you.]

What could you do? [Echoed with a strange smile. He watches her keenly. He knows much of creating a sanctuary that is less sanctuary than a stronghold against an oppressive empire, and knows much of building a following and instilling the new lessons that must be taught. She speaks of planning a rebellion, and he wonders if she thinks of it so, if she will defend it plainly.]

The empire would not have appreciated an exiled lady creating a sanctuary that defies all its laws and power. You would have been called to defend it, sooner or later. When they came, their weapons would have been sharper than cruel words.

( she considers him for a moment. she doesn't have the look of a woman who must weigh her answer, but rather one who is deciding whether or not she will give it plainly— )

If I should fall into their hands, I would be burned publicly at the stake, ( she agrees, even. matter of fact. this is not something she hasn't thought of, before. ) My daughter would have been—I am told that they endeavor to make it quick, for the children of witches. The church must consider itself merciful.

( regardless of whether or not it is. her gaze drifts; her smile obscure. for the first time, without warmth. )

Forgive me, Solas, I speak all out of order. We did not take the city I speak of by asking politely.

Then your hard yet necessary war against tyranny has been ignited.

[He tilts his head and tips his finger to his brow, in place of a deeper bow, in recognition of the battle she fought.]

I am sorry that affairs escalated to such a point. [His eyes trace her, processing this new information to judge her anew, to think: ah, so this dignified woman is a rebel.]

It is a fearsome thing, to risk what you hold most dear in the hope you will make the world better. More terrible, though, to surrender to injustice and falsehood.

More terrible, ( she repeats, contemplative. ) Yes. Well; that I should face risk was not...that decision was made for me.

( an almost neutral way of framing what could not have been so sterile a thing as it sounds, passively stated that way. )

So, of my choices, I chose what I felt I could—

( the small sound is almost a laugh, her hand laying flat against the book. )

Must we not all be able to meet our own eyes in the mirror? The cost of anything else was much too high. For me. I could have remained, I suppose. In Lamorre. I had not yet committed any crime but to love foolishly, a not unforgivable sin—it was not my exile. If I had submitted, perhaps a foreign marriage could have been found for me and I could have endured. But to be that placid thing, in that place—the price would have been my child.

I think it is not a choice anyone ought to be presented with. Ever again.

It is to arrive at a desperate crossroads, where each of the paths is more treacherous than the last. [He knows the kind.] One can only choose the least terrible option. But the consequences and the scorn bury you as surely as they would were your choice freely made.

[Whether the scorn of others, or the scorn you direct at yourself. He is not uncomfortable with the cryptic: no, he is more comfortable with it. With slowly putting together the shape of a thing, but with enough air for it left to breathe and be unknowable.

She is speaking of her life and its great tragedies and heartaches. That is not small, and it should not be made small with plain-spoken words. Not everything should be forced into something solid, certain, stark: human.

The secrets of a closed heart can look too rusted and ugly when clumsily dragged out into the unforgiving light. Discretion, and poetry, protect from that pain. Must we not all be able to meet our own eyes in the mirror?]

Just so.

( a foreign marriage might have been found—but in lamorre her name would always be followed by the whisper of marius's. she could sit quietly and carefully and never raise her eyes for thirty years and still be defined by what he had done. some days it feels freeing to have followed him into exile and at least earned some of her own reputation—

some days.

she rubs at her wrist, absently, and shimmering dust falls on the table beneath it from barely-there scaling. )

Magic has no library, in Sulleciel, but my husband has given it an army. It isn't nothing, having left with so little. He felt it would be—better for me to learn magic, as well. And it was, of course.

( better that she should be knowledgeable, and able to protect herself; better that she should share his crime, and his enemies. )

[He understands this as: her husband determined for her that she should be an accomplice. Knowledge, magic: these are tools, and ones that were forced into her hands. That’s no more a gift than teaching a slave to write so she may answer a magister’s letters. Still: magic, knowledge, literacy. All can be repurposed to be used for her own will.

In an apparent swerve:]

Your wrists shimmer, Madame de Lamorraine.

[He puts out an open palm halfway between them as a request to take her hand. Bold, but gentle enough that it’s a given that she can decline.]

May I?

Edited 2019-06-03 02:26 (UTC)

( it is an ugly and not inaccurate assessment, and yet: one from which petrana still shies away. he had presented it to her as if it were a discussion, as if it mattered that she consented—and she had, which let her live in the illusion of choice.

the last time they spoke, petrana had been wearing a diamond ring upon one of the hands that she offers to him after only a slight hesitation; now both are bare, though there is a thin, pale line upon her left hand where it had sat for long enough that it will take time for her colour to even again. )

I feel all out of sorts with myself, ( she observes, her hand small and warm and smooth in his. ) As if I should be rather more distressed than I am. I think, though, I have remade myself so many times—

And so...thoroughly.

It almost feels fitting, that this time it should be so much more literal.

[Holding the back of her hand, he puts two fingertips to her wrist, as if feeling the warm pulse of her blood. The delicate scales are more readily felt with a fingertip than seen. When he takes his hand back, they come away with a fine glittering powder.]

Like a butterfly’s wing.

[He lets go, drawing back across the table, not lingering in her space.]

Ideas are not less real than the body. You understand change. You know that you will remain you.

[And that makes all the difference. It’s a transformation that is not like being twisted into a demon or an abomination that cannot reconcile itself – it’s healthy, creative, so long as the spirit remembers its purpose, strengthens its will.]

Do you think that in a person there is something immutable?

( it feels a little like a non sequitur, and then again: it does not. she thinks for a moment to be embarrassed at her own philosophizing, and then discards the thought firmly, for how can one avoid touching upon such things when contemplating the very literal transformation of her physical being?

your wrists shimmer. so they do; so they did not, only a short time ago. and yet she is still...

petrana solene, who has always felt so mundane. so infuriatingly logical when presented with the ethereal. perhaps if there's some immutable thing in her it is that determination to approach even this in the same methodical, sensible way. she wonders if it would matter a great deal, if she were to change the things inside of her; who here has seen them to know? however seen she does feel, speaking with solas. )

I have been told it's so, though less warmly.

( a wry remark. a tension in her eases somewhat when he settles back, her hands returned to her, but it doesn't seem so cut and dried as being uncomfortable with him; certainly she's still easy in his company. rather, a certain awareness of her surroundings that she lets pass again—she had seemed, in that short moment, terribly aware of her own exposed back. then, )

I'd begun to think the body easier to change than the mind, to be perfectly frank.

[Solas examines the powder. Exasperating, to not have at his fingertips the tools he’d like to use to analyse it. He knows a hundred minor spells to divine the nature and school of any magic – all useless here. Exasperating, also, that he wastes time with fruitless frustration while he mind fails to adjust to the lack.]

I have watched both the body and mind in a heartbeat change beyond recognition, [has himself changed beyond recognition,] but they are physical phenomena. The spirit is stronger, and made sharper by a sense of self, however embodied and manifested.

[Appropos of nothing a melancholy shade comes across his face. Strange, to be talking of the spirit with a human woman in a world absent of the Fade. He knows well how wrong his perception of her people had been, but that realisation changed nothing but to make his regret cut more sharply.

He returns in his next breath to the practical matter at hand.]

It recalls the glittering lazy chains trailed by the Fae, floating about their feast.

Floating, ( she repeats, considering. the image he evokes is a lovely one, but the present, uncomfortable reality of it is another thing entirely. if she considers not bringing it up,

it feels a touch more inappropriate,

then she settles at last upon the thought that their scrutiny is unlikely to get far if she is not wholly honest about the experience. she needn't unlace her corset; they can merely discuss it. )

How should they come to be in the air? A purely magical impulse, or is there some—

Well, we speak of physical differences. What of wings?

The fae fluttered on wings. [Purely magical impulse – he warms visibly to that phrasing.] Or appeared to – for could it not all be magic and illusions, for a people who make their homes in dreams?

[It chimes with his great preoccupation, which has fixated him more than ever now that he’s been torn from the Fade. He’s thought often of the fae – a people who are one with dreams, much as the People. But that’s not quite the point of their conversation – seeking to be more useful, he steps back from that tangent.]

They were glittering and insectoid, and of a hundred different types, to my eye.

Well,

( her tone is unexpectedly a little rueful, more than anything else, )

I believe that may, perhaps, explain another facet of my present experience. I've been experiencing great discomfort, beneath my back. ( beneath the skin, she means; she is not abruptly talking about her own backside, generally covered by so many layers of fabric as to exist entirely in the theoretical to most people. ) An itch, an irritation. The...scales that you see seemed, when I managed to find them in a mirror, more concentrated there, and more—

( her nose wrinkles, slightly. this is a challenging topic to speak upon delicately, and it feels somewhat crass. )

Loose. They come away beneath fabric whenever I should move.

[A finger is brought by habit to his chin. He listens attentively as though making a clinical assessment - one that precludes personal judgement. His answer, however, perhaps falls short of professional.]

The slow unfolding of wings, like the splitting of a chrysalis. [Not said without the delight that comes with any good magical surprise.] Such extensive transformation on a material plane... I never expected to see it.

I wonder if the fae always looked as they do? Perhaps they grew their wings in just the same manner when they took physical bodies - like my people’s pointed ears.

The splitting is of some concern to me— ( but there's a genuine lightness to it. she doesn't feel as if she's coming apart so much as that she's coming together, differently; there's discomfort involved, but it doesn't feel like sickness. just strange, and a strangeness that she thinks will pass, or become familiar. every day that she doesn't wake up in her own bed with her own husband is a step towards this new normal.

she shouldn't want to build a life, but,

she misses the one she had less all the time. she only doesn't know precisely what this one will look like, yet. )

But your elven differences were chosen, then?

Not exactly.

[Should he be so incautious with his words? He has made his own nature something to be kept secret, and so it would have to remain if this world had any connections with the Inquisition or any other half-way effective organisation. But it’s so satisfying to share his knowledge openly, and this feels as easy as if this were a dream and she a spirit.]

Why we look the way we do is unknown to me. [He is ancient, but his people far more so.] The spirits who chose to take bodies made themselves fit a shape that was first moulded in forgotten times. As you are being made to resemble the established form of a fae.

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

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