Mornings in the dining hall are usually the best time to catch up. Jude comes out with a plate of breakfast to sit next to Gela, and between them he places a few still-warm slices of bread, along with a little pot of jam.
"Don't know if you like rhubarb," he says, "But this is the first batch."
It is good: he finds Gela there, still waking up judging by how snugly her chin fits in the palm of her hand, propped up by her elbow on the edge of the table. She gives Jude a fond smile, nose scrunching in greeting.
"I love rhubarb." She'll go ahead, in that case, giving her head a gentle shake as she reaches for the jam and knife.
Bad dreams. Worse sleep! The usual. Give her a few moments... she slathers some bread thickly, and lifts it to her nose to sniff before she bites, and sighs. "S'good." Goes nice with the cup of tea she's got already, stinking of herbs, "Thank you."
Rifters were pickier than expected, who knew? Jude smiles back, takes a slice of his own and covers it, bites into it. The taste covers the urge to sneeze at the strong scent of Gela's herbal tea.
"What are you drinking?" he asks. "Smells like you're trying to fight a cold."
"More for me!" A terrible shame. She lifts her cup with the hand that isn't holding bread, holds it out for Jude to see she, "Made it myself."
The contents swirl about. They smell very strong but taste even stronger, almost bitter. There is ginger in there, elfroot, and something red and clumpy floating around on the surface, maybe flower petals? Apparently you have to strain it as you drink it, with your own teeth. "It's for luck," Gela explains, "And stomach ache."
Jude leans in to waft a bit of it toward him, and the fact that it immediately grows so strong makes him very happy he didn't put his face right next to it. He'd have been rude as hell and coughed everywhere.
"Now what are you cultivating luck for?" he asks, lifting both eyebrows, discreetly clearing his throat into his fist.
"All sorts," Gela says, giving him a look over the rim of the cup as she lifts it to her mouth, "Who would say no to any extra?"
Jude, perhaps, but she thinks privately that he probably doesn't need any luck. He connects so easily with other people, and that can often be a stand in for any good fortune. Plus, she has to admit once she's returned to her bread, "It's mainly on account of our approachin' Chantry guest."
Jude returns to his own bread, doctoring each piece and putting it back on the plate, methodical and a little childish, maybe. He likes to eat it in exact ratios of bread to butter and jam.
He makes a noise in the back of his throat, somewhere between a grumble of assent and an actual growl, too deep for human hearing.
"The Gallows is shaking in their boots. Makes it hard to keep an open mind."
The low grumbling gives Gela an odd shiver, which she resolutely ignores because they are at work, now. They are talking about work things. She puts bread into her mouth, and chews.
"Yes," she admits, glancing sideways at him, "How much do you know about the Chantry, out of curiousity?"
"Conflicting things," Jude admits. "Mostly to the tune of Templars and mages and mage circles. The story of the original Blights and how they came to be, the profaning of the Golden City, the basic story of Andraste. The basic tenets of the faith."
Bits and pieces and chunks.
"The Chantry itself and the hierarchy? Very little."
She finishes what she's eating, licks a smudge of honey from her thumb. "I'm not so sure what it's like elsewhere; in Nevarra we have the Chantry, the templars, and they regulate the use of magic like they would anywhere else. I'm not sure they have the most political power, but their presence is huge."
Conversationally, "I grew up prayin' to Andraste. We all did."
A neutral thing, to Jude. He's never much understood religion, but it means very much to some of the people he cares deeply about, and he respects it for that reason.
"Even the places that don't have a lot of Chantry activity, the attitudes are still there even if the Chant isn't. When I first came, I got to thinking that it was the culture. Still detangling what is and isn't."
"It is. They have a lot of political power, so they get to decide."
Whether or not they are the dominant power in Nevarra is... debatable, she thinks, but she won't ruin this lovely breakfast they're having by speaking of the Mortalitasi. Still, her brow is furrowed, gaze fixed on her plate. "Have you been asked to speak with her?"
Jude nods, as if he knows what she's talking about. He might not, but he understands the flow of power, and that current runs deep enough to pull everything with it downstream.
"Yeah," she says with a deep sigh, sitting back in his seat, spreading his thighs to put his feet firmly on the floor.
"The higher-ups want a smile and a warm welcome. S'pose we can't blame them for thinking I'm suited. You?"
Her gaze flickers for a second toward his lap, and she hopes he doesn't notice, busying herself with a gulp of tea, and then carefully getting a flower petal off the flat of one front tooth.
"Makes sense." Him being so likeable and beautiful and all, "Me too.
Do you think they chose us because we're still quite new?"
And not in possession of many deep, uncomfortable truths about Riftwatch?
Gela nods, fascinated, her chin in her hand. She says, "I think they liked to be listened to. My family are merchants. We had all sorts of customers, and older women like to hear that they're right, I think. And be asked questions, because it show you're listenin'.
"All good- they can spot insincerity a mile away, so don't stretch too hard, don't play it up. Ask about the things that interest you.
"Everybody likes to hear they're right, but if you're not sure she's right, don't say she is, don't disagree. Ask another question, or tell her you hadn't considered that before."
The dining hall is not as full as it might be at the peak of dinner hourβa steady churn of people coming and going, broken off conversation, chairs scraping and clay plates and tin cups. If Gela had started her meal in company, she is now set to finish it alone as the table clears.
And then she isn't, a plate set down on opposite her at the same table.
It wouldn't occur to Marcus to ask to do so, or sit down just after, despite that he never has before, certainly hasn't since the Dirthamen temple. He makes for a more ordinary shape out of his armor, less bulk about the shoulders in grey linen, greyer cotton, the faint scent of horse and hay about his person, and also he isn't half-cowering in a simultaneously waterlogged and dust strewn sunken temple bleeding from the leg.
He also has a tankard, and this stays in his hand as he says, "Evening," before taking a swig.
Gela has a fork halfway to her mouth when somebody takes the seat opposite and in lifting her head to say hello, pauses. In a way, she has been waiting for this to happen ever since they returned from Dirthamen, shaken, sore and with each other's secrets, but even anticipation can't stop her heart from racing now.
"Good evening." She won't bother with her fake tone. After a momentary wobble, the fork completes its journey.
He doesn't know a thing... He knows what he saw, but it would have felt unbelievable to him, presented as messily and half-formed as it was at the time. And now, with his memories back, he remembers Gela has no magic.
There is no uncertainty in his regard of her across the table. In the confusion of memory fragments in the oppressive void of knowing absolutely nothing else, it had been a war between doubt and restraint and fear and mistrust, given more to transparency on a day he'd forgotten not to be opaque.
Here, this is a little more like the guards' office, the candlelight, the focus set on her that isn't intending to flay back muscle and nerve for the answers they're disguising, but has an edge nevertheless. Studying.
"I wanted to continue our conversation from the temple, now that we've the benefit of context."
She won't go so far as to pretend she's surprised to hear he wants this. Honestly, Gela isn't sure how she's supposed to react. She is tense and nervous, and there's a lead weight in her stomach that makes continuing to eat her dinner very hard. Nobody has ever been this close to figuring this out about her.
A year, she's been here. She was doing so well.
She puts her fork down.
"Okay."
May as well make him work for it until the very end. "I'm assuming you have questions."
With no lead weight in his stomach, Marcus pulls apart the half-piece of bread he'd dropped onto his plate. The needle-point of his attention dipping down to ensure he doesn't make a mess when he uses the stew to soften the cracked crust. A couple of rings glint in nearby lantern light, a fancy looking signet stamped with, perhaps, initials, and another of cheap silver and black stone.
They click against the tankard as he goes to pick that up too.
"Can you explain to me the memory of yours I saw?"
Gela's thinking of it too... she doesn't have very solid memories of those years in the forest, only odd flashes and scents or feelings that invade her dreams. Sometimes she can feel dirt underneath paws she doesn't have any more, the phantom-limb sensation of being four-legged or having a tail, a bedraggled coat and long snout.
Like a memory, of being in the woods, and hunting. Like an animal would.
She's been quiet for a little bit too long. Words jump into her mouth so she says them with no regard for if they sound at all truthful, clawing for a way out. "It's a dream that I have, messere, whenever I'm too tired. That's all. It used to scare me awake on the road."
It's vivid, for him. It still sticks in his mind, as easily summoned as something that belongs to him. Familiar, in its way. He remembers, also, a forest in another world, the cracking of fine rabbit bones between strong jaws and the spilling of hot blood, and this other thing could be so much like those memories except for how that copper-tasting residue caught between fangs had, he had known (she had known), belonged to a person.
And it didn't feel like a dream. He drinks from his ale as he allows her explanation to fill the space between them. Measuring it.
"I know dreams," after a moment, setting down the tankard. "Mages who have endured the education of the south are well-versed in their make." A subtle shake of his head, a concrete certainty to it. "It wasn't that, what I recalled. It was a real thing. Again," is a prompt, for her to re-address the question.
Gela has to take her hand off the table and hide it in her lap so he won't see it begin to shiver. It's slipping away from her, spiraling out of control. She can't think of a good enough explanation and even if she could she has a feeling he wouldn't accept it, or worse, that he would acquiesce but stealth around behind her back anyway, nosing for clues, reading into things. Telling other people about it, asking if they'd heard anything strange about her, from her, and she can barely stand the thought of that.
Again, then.
"I'm a shape-shifter," she says suddenly, sitting upright. "Like Jude is, or the man who used to live here, the one who turned into birds and dogs.
Here, Marcus doesn't immediately speak again. A silence settles, but it's of a sort of receptive kind, an invitation to speak more to the topic rather than a cynical front.
She's too wound up to notice if she's getting through or not, and it's worse when he says nothing. His silence, is it judgemental? Or disbelieving?
She adds, "I don't like to use such power, if I can help it. I'd rather not, actually, I β nobody knows, about this."
He was the first to have met her. He will remember that she said nothing of the sort back then, so Gela likes to think this adds a sense of credibility.
He doesn't leave off his dinner. It could be calculated, some attempt to put her at ease or to throw off any external impression of a serious conversation being held in the dining hall, or some opposite thing, designed to unsettle. Or he was getting dinner and saw her and decided there is nothing like the present. Either wayβ
A few bites down, a hand back to his tankard. "I see no reason for you to declare yourself to the company," he says. Apparently, her claim has been accepted as fact. She is a mage. He has his biases. "And I have no desire to endanger you by asking it."
He tips the tankard slightly, a gesture. "But I'll need a measure of assurance from you. After dinner, will you come by my office so that we can speak frankly?"
Gela doesn't seem to understand that he's accepted her lie. She watches him eat his dinner in silence; it feels like she's sitting both there and across the room at the same time. Anxiety crawls the length of her spine, marching like ants. She swallows and blinks.
"Okay." Her voice is faint. She can't wrap her head around the magnitude of what she's just told him and what it will mean, for her. Gela doesn't dare start to wonder what Marcus will think when he inevitably discovers the truth.
There is time to take it backβ
And say what in its place? That she is a shape-shifter but not by choice, and she's putting the Gallows and its residents in danger by staying? He'll ask to her leave, or he'll lock her up and Gela doesn't want either of those things to happen. She should but she likes it here. She likes this little life.
She says, hushed, "You're the only person I've told," as if in explanation of herself, the sudden pallor in her cheeks. When she said nobody, she meant nobody.
He remembers, rather distinctly, her startles at minor magical effect, having dismissed it, or even used it as confirmation that the woman who had turned up in the pouring rain at the gate was no apostate or runaway Circle mage. It isn't a thing that niggles at him now. Plenty of mages fear their own ability, the abilities of others. He only thinks of it, as she says that.
Marcus nods once at that. "Because you had to," he says. "Because I saw something you wouldn't have shared. Something like that could well happen again, with someone else."
A Templar, maybe, or any non-mage at all who can't mind their business. Studies her, noting the paleness to her skin, the hush in her voice.
But yes, he's right when she thinks on it. It could happen again, and with somebody who doesn't seek her out first for confirmation. The next person could go straight to a division head with the information or confront her in public.
She feels airless for a moment, her throat working.
"Stay," Marcus suggests. "Work. Eat your food," is more short-term, granted, a tip of his head that seems to acknowledge he's likely spoilt her appetite, and is nearly apologetic for it. "I would have you consider speaking to more folk than only me, but it can wait. And I can make suggestions."
Until he has time to properly assess the risk. Or she chooses, in the interim between sitting here in the dining hall and meeting him in his office, whether she wishes to vanish across the waters. He would prefer she did not, but it would be a decently deniable means of a problem solved on its own.
"Is there something you would know of me?" A slight raise of an eyebrow. "For the sake of fairness."
Gela forgot that she had food. When her attention finally goes to it she pushes the bowl sideways with her fingertips; she doesn't want it any more. She presumes he wants her to try to talk with other people who are mages and hide it, or don't hide it as the case may be. Lying, to all of those people... Her stomach turns over.
She won't run though. Gela doesn't know if she could begin to make herself do that, she feels inexorably tied to Riftwatch and her business.
A slow nod. She asks to have him speak to her, and then she doesn't have to talk back or think of good words through her churning brain. "What Circle did you come here from?"
Something in her choice of question is faintly amusing, but it's hard to read in his expression, given towards subtle microexpression, a reflexive restraint. It is not so intimate a memory as the one he gleaned from her, but he will answer regardless. "Starkhaven Circle," he says. "As is Tsenka, if you know her. I was taken there when I was young, nine or so." Although she has been put off her food, he continues with his own, now disassembling the second bit of bread on his plate. "And kept there for fourteen years.
"And then I came here," and he gestures, a little, with the bread piece, "to the Gallows, while it was still a Circle itself. The Starkhaven one had suffered a fire, so we were all relocated until it was rebuilt. We returned once it was, and then burned it down again. The rebellion. No Circles, after that."
Ever again, in his tone, but he scarcely need press that point.
"I know her," Gela echoes quietly, thinking. Thinking, of the golden College of Magi visible from the Cumberland markets, knowing from a young age that she wasn't supposed to go in there, or even near, and wondering what went on inside anyway. There was a lot of gossip about it; she speculated darkly with her friends when she was young. Marcus went to a Circle when he was nine. He was there for fourteen years.
A pang of sympathy draws her brows together momentarily.
"You've come a long way."
And he doesn't want to go back, ever. That much is obvious, and that's a feeling that Gela understands very well.
Sympathy is not the intention so much asβ, well, but it's not a bad sign that it's evoked; he nods to her comment, accepting it.
But there's utility in sharing. A sense of even-handedness, as he'd said. A sense of dismantling preconception, and maybe just giving her a moment out of the focus of the conversation, as pale as she'd gone. He takes a bite of food, again, more pragmatic than polite in table manners.
"Perhaps a few days before I was taken to the Circle," Marcus says. "There was an accident by the fireplace, just some minor thing that went unnoticed. But I didn't keep that secret very well. I didn't wish to be alone with it."
Gela looks startled. She can't think of an appropriate lie so she tells him what is true, which is, "When I was twenty-eight." That's when it happened, but that number is very, very far away from nine.
But perhaps it's not uncommon? She doesn't offer an anecdote to go along with it.
Uncommon enough that there is a flicker of surprise across features that trend impassive. If it's impossible, Marcus doesn't raise objection, absorbing this next question instead.
Studies her, as if truly thinking about it in the moment, then says, "I don't wish to," as he scrapes a fork around his plate and then lays it down. "But the memory I took from you indicated that you aren't in complete possession of your abilities." And so, her having come into them at the late age of twenty-eight might make some sense, for better or for worse.
"I require assurance you aren't anymore a danger to yourself and those around you," as he collects up his things. The table creaks as he uses it to lever himself to his feet. "My office, when you're done eating."
Oh no. She sees that flicker of surprise and feels as if she is briefly plummeting downward as she waits for him to condemn herβ
But he doesn't. At least not knowingly. The thing he says about her not being in control of her abilities is certainly a blow whether he knows it or not. Gela watches him scrape his fork around the plate and feels airless, holds herself perfectly still. It's so difficult to be in this conversation. She feels exhausted actually, like she needs to go and lay down. Being told to come to his office is truly the final straw for what little calm she has left.
Her voice accidentally skips when she answers. "Ohβ okay. Okay."
She doesn't dare to look at the plate she'd pushed away from herself earlier, still half-full. She's not going to eat it but she'll definitely sit here and pretend to until he's left the room, so she hastens to take up her utensil again and holds it loosely, looking lost.
He can see the way that chills her. No regret forms in his expression, just a last evaluating look, as if it to try to separate panic from guilt, or whatever other thing that has her voice skip, has her hold herself so still.
"It'll be alright," Marcus tells her, an altered echo, and no less true now than it was a moment ago. It isn't nothing, no, but it isn't everything.
And he'll leave her be. In his office, up in the central tower, there is some paperwork he needs seeing to while he waits. There is the faint expectation that she might run, now, and affording her the opportunity had seemed like the correct maneuver, but then, perhaps there'd been a better way to inspire some trust. That he comes up short on how he might have done so doesn't dismiss the thought.
It's hard to reconcile with a mage who mightn't trust their own kind. But then, an apostate, one who never knew herself to be one for a substantial portion of her lifeβ
Well, that's different.
She will find his door unlatched and cracked open, lamp light within tinged with cigarette smoke.
When he's left the hall, Gela doesn't immediately move. She sits there with her dinner cooling, congealing. She thinks.
There are a few options:
She could leave right now. Part of her thinks Marcus might have left her a gap between conversations for this purpose; he was there when she arrived unexpectedly in the dark, and must imagine her leaving in the same way. It wouldn't take long to pack. She's acquired things by staying here, but Gela remembers how to travel light. The only problem with this plan is that she doesn't want to go.
She could tell Marcus the truth in his office. She doesn't want to do that either, maybe even less than leaving. Somehow it feels too late to be considering it.
What Gela really wants to do is ask somebody for advice on how to get out of this, but she's told nobody of it. And she can't start now, there's no time... It feels like she sits at the table for ever, head in her hands, hating having fallen into this. Hating how attached she's become to this little life because now she can't bear to leave it.
When she arrives at his office she looks much the same as she did before, pale and resigned to her fate. No running, no hiding away, no asking for help... No casting magic either, so he'd better not ask her to do it. It's not that Marcus looks or acts at all like her mother, more that visiting him like this reminds Gela of her: a narrow room and chair, warm smoke and lamp-light, the sense of having done something wrong.
She finds she can't say anything to herald her arrival. She appears inside, without much noise.
Good, is all he thinks when the door cracks open wider and Gela quietly steps into the room. He might have thought the same had it turned out she'd run off, but with less satisfaction, some amount of regret.
A nod is followed with, "Latch the door," and setting about ordering the pages in front of him so he can se them aside without losing his place. The cigarette he has burning is wedged between his knuckles, held with practiced ease not to get ash everywhere as he does so. There's a chair opposite his side of the desk, slightly angled aside. A second desk is on the other side of the office, but seems somewhat unused.
It smells of smoke and fainter still of dog, in here, but clean, orderly. When Marcus sets aside his work, he doesn't then go to retrieve a fresh piece of paper and quill, just shifts his ashtray to a more convenient spot.
A gesture to a brass case on the desk silently asks: would she like one?
Gela does so, with the sinking feeling that she is locking herself in. Remembering that, technically, if anything does go wrong in this moment, she has locked him in here with her, doesn't help much. She feels shivery, no braver than before despite the break she took before walking herself up here.
"... No thank you," to the offer of a cigarette, as she slinks into the chair opposite his desk, curling into it, one leg tucked underneath of her body. She puts her hands delicately on the edges of it.
There is a lot of work on his desk. She cranes her head to look at it, curious, and then suddenly he takes it and sets it out of her line of sight. She retracts herself, embarrassed, glancing at her hands and nails.
One of the problems is that, "I don't know why you're doing this for me."
Maybe Marcus ought to have offered her a stiff drink instead. There are glasses somewhere, liquor on a shelf. A finger of whiskey might do her some good. But so too would getting this over with, he suspects, and starts considering his way around levering the conversation when she, instead, says that.
A minor gesture, hand tipping aside, a silent indication that he think it self-explanatory, but doesn't sound impatient when he says, "Because I was raised to consider mages something like kin, and taught to look after those who might require it. Because your business is your own, and I wouldn't be doing anything about it in an official capacity if not for my concern that you present a danger to yourself and others, given what I saw.
"Or felt," amendment. Bluntly, now that they are behind a latched door and stone walls, he says, "In this memory, you recall having killed someone. I need to know more."
Oh, well, okay. His answer is nothing she couldn't have already guessed from what he told her in the dining hall and buys her little time, maybe even makes him steer toward the actual topic at hand. He's keen to get this conversation over with. Perhaps he's just as uncomfortable as Gela is.
Swallowing, she says, "I want to know what you saw. Describe it to me?"
The request settles heavily, but he nods, sharp focus dulling as study pulls inwards.
"I recall forest," Marcus says. "Running through it. I had just eaten. A man, hunting him to the edge of a river, killing and eating him. There's no memory of that," has a faint tinge of relief, "only remembering it, and tasting blood. Feeling full. After everything, I remember it being like,"
and here he pauses, an ordering of thoughts as he taps ash from his cigarette, brow drawing at the centre. "I'd gone to Adjei's world, during that time in the Crossroads. I'd had abilities like he has, and I'd taken on a wolf shape. There were a few days where I'd become lost in it, its instincts overtaking any sense of myself. The ability to think as a person would. That's how this memory felt."
Maybe, somewhere in there, more reason that he is doing this. Something that cleaves closer to the bone and is more difficult to express than simply we are, both, mages.
"You said you don't use this ability anymore," is a prompt, turning the conversation back over to her for handling.
"Oh," says Gela faintly, halfway through his recollection. She knows which one he's speaking of. And he knows that she can't control this thing inside of her at all, that she had to ride along inside it as it loped through the woods, licking blood off its maw.
If only she had gone to Jude's world in the first place. At the time she felt violently relieved to have not but in hindsight, it would have made a good alibi.
Pushing for words, to respond, she blurts, "No. I don't want to. I think it has power over me."
Which is the closest she's ever come to really saying it, out loud. It's terrifying and exhilarating. Unknowingly, one of her hands has come to lay on her chest, palm pressing down as if trying to hold something in.
The rules in Jude's world were different. The wolf-like instincts in himself had felt separate from his own, but Marcus had been prepared to believe them in their explanations about what that was: an animal, born of the real world, as intrinsic to any of them as their own more human personalities.
Here, he knows it isn't so. That the likeliest explanation would be that of a young mage accessing shapechanging magics, but leaving herself open to spirits and demons who might exploit it. His study of her is careful, stern, but doesn't seem to bear judgment, if she were looking for it.
"There are those here who might help you," he says, quietly. "Whether you choose to engage in it again or not. Derrica has mastery over the conversing with spirits. She's from Rivain, where such traditions existβthe willing invitation of these kinds of beings. You know Adjei," everyone knows Adjei, "whose talents are distinct from the ones from this realm, but nevertheless, would provide you with empathy, and more, if you chose to pursue your magics."
He turns his cigarette to tap spent ash and ember into the crystal tray by his arm. "Enchanter Julius and myself have taught young mages before. And I know what it is to feel afraid of what I could do. If it's not why you came to Riftwatch, and chose to stay, you may wish to enter this reasoning into it."
Gela does a little flinch at the word because of how on the nose it is. That's how she thinks of it, possession, and for a moment she's certain what he says next will be an accusation of some kind because he has realised her lie but it doesn't come. She doesn't like this, she'd rather not be here and he most likely knows that, which is why his voice is gentle when he does keep talking.
"What if I want it to be gone?" Not understood, or empathised with. She's leaning forward in her chair, nauseous and hopeful, ignoring everything else he's just said. "Is that possible?"
She has seen healers... None of them ever say what she wants them to, but Gela does understand that hers is a rare circumstance.
Marcus answers first with a quiet, affirmative grunt, and it takes him longer to specify: "The Rite of Tranquility.
"Traditionally," he adds, in the tone of someone who is not recommending the thing he is saying. "Under the Circles, a mage could request to be severed from their own dreaming mind, their sense of empathy and ego, in exchange for sealing themselves from their magic and the demons that hunger for it. It's a steep price. I don't think I've ever met a mage who truly required it."
But that, says the harsh tap of the cigarette, is a whole other conversation, and he didn't compel Gela into his office to lecture her on the Circles and their politics of fear. He says, "I still haven't."
"I understand." Perfectly: it is not something she could ask for without raising eyebrows.
(Butβif she had something severed in her mind, could a skilled sever-er not reach inside and cut the wolf out, leaving the rest of Gela in? She will ask somebody else about this, maybe check the library for more information. It seems like a lead.)
"I'll speak with Jude." This is the first bit of truth she's told him. Jude should know about all of this. Really, he should have known some time ago; she should have been brave. Now she'll be confiding to get him on side, which is terrible, but they respect each other, don't they, Jude and Marcus, so this much may satisfy Marcus enough to leave Gela to her own devices. It will buy her some time.
She chooses some more words, working through them carefully. "It's very kind of you to be concerned about me. I need to think on what I'd like to do before I try to speak with Enchanter Julius, or yourself, about practice taking place. Do you mind?"
Gela says that she will speak with Jude, and this is assuring. Also assuring: that she says (even if it's only to be polite, and what Diplomacy agent isn't adept at finessing a conversation, with the careful way she chooses her words) that he's been very kind. A better thing to be called than cold or intrusive or cruel, certainly. Oddly easy to convey those impressions, when attempting to do a kind thing. Or a right thing.
Marcus does not give much away, habitually, but there's some quality in accepting what she says even besides the nod that says he doesn't mind. Something he was seeking, and has been given.
"Very well," he says. "Seek me when you're ready."
That he may seek her before she is is a possibility, but not one he feels the need to articulate. Instead;
"Unless there's anything you require of me, you can go."
She tries not to scramble up from her seat, instead rising slowly from it, giving her skirts a patting down with her hands to remove imaginary dust. Marcus is a very stoic person. He is hard to glean any details from and she realises that she is envious of this trait, because she tried very hard to emulate it for years and failed. Gela is completely unable to wall herself off in the way that he does. Little parts of her will always peek through.
"Nothing for now; I'll call if anything occurs." That isn't really a lie. He's now the closest to the truth anybody has ever been, so if Gela has to say something to protect the people in the Gallows, he will be the one to hear it.
It's probably a little weird, when Clarisse slides into the spot across from Gela at the dining hall.
It's not strange that the two of them are both there at the same time—Clarisse almost never skips meals, and Gela seems to like hanging out in here—but while Clarisse isn't opposed to sitting with someone if they invite her to, she's not typically rushing over to initiate conversation.
Maybe she's overthinking this.
"If you had to apologize to somebody, how would you do it?"
"Hello," Gela says happily when she sits, smiling: would you like some tea? She's got a pot there, a battered thing, and a cup for her and more nearby. She gestures with one, and mimes pouring while Clarisse speaks.
Yes, no?
"I'd probably just tell them 'I'm sorry', and nicely. How come?"
Clarisse gives her a little nod re: the tea. Sure.
"It's nothing specific. I just realized I never... learned?" She's fully aware that her answer sounds ridiculous. Six year olds know how to say they're sorry. But she continues on anyway. "I'm very good at being a soldier, but if you want to do anything more than that, you need to know how to talk to people. And you're in diplomacy, so that's your expertise, right?"
It's over-simplifying them both, but she's not the best at this shit, clearly.
She is poured a cup of reddish-brown tea, that smells very strongly of herb. A few bits are floating around in there... they might be petals.
Gela pushes it toward her with her fingertips, privately delighted that Clarisse came to ask her about this.
"It is." And she's happy to help. She adds, "I think that, when you're looking for a proper, meaningful apology, it helps to say what you did wrong. If you say 'I'm sorry', vaguely, it might cause the other person to wonder if you even know what you're so sorry about."
Bending over the cup, Clarisse gives a little sniff, trying to smell whatever's floating around in her tea. It's nothing she can identify, but it doesn't smell bad, so after a couple seconds she straightens up again to face Gela.
"So instead of saying 'sorry' you'd say 'sorry for shoving your head into a toilet,'" is what she's getting from this. "But then what if they think you're only saying what they want to hear? Like—what if they don't believe you?"
"Well," Gela says, after she's recovered from hearing 'sorry for shoving your head into a toilet', "There's not a lot you can do if somebody doesn't believe you. All you can say is you're sorry, and mean it, and then leave it be."
Not ideal, of course, but it happens.
She adds, "And then you never approach that person while they're near a toilet again, unless they get the wrong idea."
It sounds deceptively simple, the way Gela puts it. Just say you're sorry, but be specific, and don't do whatever it is again. If the person doesn't believe you, let it be.
"All right." Clarisse sounds a little bit mystified, like all of this has never occurred to her before. Is it that easy for everybody else? Has it been that easy the whole time, and she's just been making life harder for herself?
She sips her tea. It's good.
"Does it embarrass you?" she asks, without intending to. "When you apologize to someone?"
Gela can't tell if she's mocking her or not but she's not known Clarisse to act like that before. Not toward her, anyways. Naturally she's waiting for the punchline of the whole thing, and all Clarisse does is sit there and look at her, considering every word while she sips her tea.
Hmm.
She says, "You have siblings, don't you?" Gela has never said the word sorry more to anybody else.
And, "Sometimes, yes. Especially when what I've done is really bad."
She nods. Okay, that's something. At least she isn't the only one who feels mortified when they have to utter the word "sorry."
And then: You have siblings, don't you?
Clarisse screws up her face, trying to think of a way to answer the question honestly but without making it sound unhinged. There really isn't one.
"Technically, yes. But I didn't grow up with them. We only got brought to camp once we were old enough, and we all lived together there, but it wasn't like..." She shrugs one shoulder. A family. "We were like an army."
A small army. Made up entirely of teenagers.
"I wouldn't apologize to one of them any more than Flint would apologize to me."
That's a little sad to her, siblings who aren't really family. Growing up alone, then joining an army. "That makes sense as to why you're out of practice, then.
But the Commander would apologise to you, if he thought it were necessary. Wouldn't he?"
Actually, she doesn't know Flint. Maybe he wouldn't? She thinks that Byerly certainly would if the situation called for it. Musing, now, "It's so much harder to say sorry to people who outrank you, I think. It's hard to make it seem like anything other than groveling."
Clarisse doubts it, but it's nothing personal against Flint. More like a commanding officer thing.
Anyway.
"I guess I find it hard no matter who I'm talking to," she mumbles. "If I outrank them, it makes me look weak. If they outrank me, like you said, it's groveling." Uuuughh, why is this shit so annoying?
"Maybe you should try to think of it a different way," Gela suggests. "I personally think it takes a great deal of strength to apologise properly, especially when you don't want to do it."
She holds her thoughtful expression for a moment before her nose scrunches up.
Look, Clarisse isn't going to save anyone's feelings here, but at the same time she's not sure she totally disagrees with Gela's assessment. Maybe there's some middle ground she can land on, someday.
She chews her bottom lip, holding onto the cup of tea with both hands until the heat starts to hurt her palms. "My father would disagree with you. And for him, being weak is the worst thing you can be. 'Anything cracked will shatter at a touch.'" She exhales slowly. "I'm trying to figure out how much of what he told me is bullshit, but it's hard."
Gela mutters, under her breath, "He's not the first father to," disagree with her, that is, and then she cups her hand over her mouth like she didn't mean to say it. She waits for a moment, just in case there's more there that might slip out. It seems okay.
"I think a lot of it was." It seems important, to say this. "For one thing, plates crack and shatter. Cups too, or window panes.
But you're a person, Clarisse. We are more complicated than that."
That muttered comment gets Clarisse to raise her eyebrows. It's questioning, but she doesn't ask out loud—not yet, anyway.
"That's what I'm learning."
Even saying that, for her, is huge.
"I feel a little like I wasn't..." She stops herself from saying taught; that's a step too far over the line. "Like I didn't know much, before I got here," is what she settles on.
She tries not to point out that Clarisse is barely twenty years old.
... What was she like at that age? Did she feel like she knew much? She's thinking of a different person, a Gela unburdened by bad luck. She sighs, and cups her palm around the back of her neck underneath of her hair, holding herself, suddenly uncharacteristically moody.
Eventually, this shift in tone relents. She straightens, and reaches for her cup. "If the best time to learn it was before you got here, surely the second best time is now."
So she's doing well. "What else are you learning?"
The shift in Gela's mood is obvious, and Clarisse isn't sure what to do about it. For one thing, she's not sure what exactly brought it on—something she said, that much is clear, but what? Should she apologize?
She can't apologize. That's what this whole conversation has been about. She'd have a heart attack. She's looking a little sweaty about it already.
And then Gela seems to recover just as quickly, leaving Clarisse even more confused.
"That I don't have to take myself so seriously all the time, I guess." She takes a sip of her tea. "And how to, like... bake bread."
Gela, sensing this confusion, smiles to let her know it's all okay.
She says, "I'm learning to make friends again?" Which is slightly embarrassing to admit to! "It was hard to make and keep them while I was travelling around."
You can't even write to people, when you've no permanent address. She hooks her finger around a curl of her hair as she's speaking and pulls it out, straight. When she lets it go again, it jumps back into shape and nearly gets in her teacup, but she doesn't seem to notice that. "And how to use a knife properly. Ellie is teaching me."
Clarisse nods—she doesn't think it's embarrassing that Gela is figuring out how to make friends after years of being on the move. Sounds like a valid reason if you ask her—and is in the middle of snorting over Gela's curl nearly sproinging into her teacup when she's suddenly reminded of the fact that Gela knows about her and Ellie. Or at least knew that they were hooking up, doing that ridiculous "we're just friends who sleep together!" thing. Said they should have rules, apparently.
The tips of her ears go red, but she soldiers on.
"Ellie's great with knives," she agrees. "You couldn't find a better teacher. Well, except for me."
The look on Gela's face, so excited and genuine, gets Clarisse smiling too. She can't help it. What Ellie said earlier reoccurs to her: She was excited, it was kinda sweet.
"We can talk about it," she says. "I mean, if you want to."
Please, she's dying to dish about it, but she doesn't want to be the weirdo who makes someone else listen to her talk about her relationship. Still, this is already a better reaction than she's ever gotten from her roommate, so it's a good sign.
"Ellie told me it came up with you guys once before. Ellie told me recently, I mean. But your conversation must have happened a while ago, because apparently you told her we should have rules, but she ignored you and now we're dating." Haha! Wild!
And she has a feeling Clarisse does too, judging by the way she just sat up a little straighter in her chair and edged closer to the table. Gela leans in too, now that they're doing proper gossip, elbows up on the table.
She laughs instantly when Clarisse mentions Ellie telling her about that, interrupting delightedly to tell her, "Oh! I knew it! That's so nice. How long have you been dating for?"
Ellie hadn't said a word! Gela is making a mental note to bully her about it later...
Clarisse has to think about it for a second, and sounds almost surprised when she answers: "Since Guardian."
In her defense, it doesn't feel like it's been five months already. It's felt like it's gone by in a flash, and also like she's known Ellie forever. Then again, Clarisse is coming up on one year since she ended up in Thedas. It's at the end of this month, in fact. And she met Ellie pretty soon after she got here, and they were fooling around soon after that, so it makes sense, but—
Gela's eyebrows raise. "No wonder she didn't take my advice."
By then it was past of the point of rules. She imagines they fell for each other swiftly and without realising it, which is such a romantic thought that she sighs with her chin in her hand. "I'm so happy for you both.
Is there a story? Who said something first?"
She really does want all the details Clarisse, hit her with them!
And unfortunately for Gela, Clarisse has had a while to think about all this and basically nobody to talk about it with, so she's gonna get the whole rambling mess.
"Ellie said something first. It was after she came back from a mission and we were hanging out in her room—" If by hanging out you mean cuddling in her bed, obviously— "but it honestly felt like we were together way before that. I mean, we went on a date during Wintermarch, in New York. We held hands the whole time."
She runs a fingertip up the side of her cup. "It sounds really dumb now, because we kept saying we were just friends but we were never just friends from the very start, you know? But I think we were both scared we were going to screw everything up if we said anything."
Gela shakes her head. "That's not dumb. It's hard, moving it all from one thing to another."
Sleeping with somebody, wanting to move along into dating them, having to tell them that, it's very hard. It can feel so dramatic. Gela remembers. She pinks up suddenly, attention darting elsewhere, teeth pressing into her lip.
That Ellie said something first is very charming, especially since she was the one nervously telling Gela a few details out on the ice, that Satinalia. She says, knowing the answer already but wanting to hear it directly from Clarisse, "Are you very happy?"
It's true, and maybe she didn't realize it until this exact moment. Not that she's happy, but how happy she is. Even rolling out of bed in the morning with the sun barely up, ready for drills and work. Even doing thankless heavy lifting, or riding out for a mission where she knows she'll end up dirty and exhausted and maybe hurt. Happy.
She is, it's so nice to hear about things like this, it's something she's really missed while she was traveling. Gossip will go anywhere, but it doesn't much matter unless you care about the people being gossiped about. And like seeing them happy, and trying to bashfully hide it away. Cute.
To answer Clarisse's question, "No."
Well. "There's Jude, but it's not anything serious." Which she likes, very much.
"You hook up with Jude?" Clarisse isn't really shocked to be finding this out; she's definitely seen Jude and Gela talk before and they seem pretty friendly with each other. Still, it's a pleasant little surprise.
"Good for you. He's hot." And he makes good pancakes.
"Not today," is Clarisse's answer, but she knows herself well enough not to assume it won't be the case, like, tomorrow. Or two weeks from now. Or whenever.
Hell, it's already happened a couple times in the past, and while she likes to think she did a decent job apologizing (or decent for her, at least) she would still like to... be better at it.
I trust you'll make a better judge of materials than me. Include it in the cost, absolutely. I'll put down a deposit. Just... Well. It's meant to be a gift. Do you know who Viktor is?
Not a date, necessarily. Just want to give him something warm for these colder months that also fits well enough. Think... warm enough for moseying around the Gallows. I'll provide the measurements.
[ He is somewhat aware of what areas require it, having utilized a tailor in his home world, albeit infrequently. ]
The material I'll leave to your discretion. The color-- I think he'd be most comfortable in something dark.
[ The imagery prompted by these questions makes him chuckle. ]
It could work if it's subtle, complimentary... Something you might have to double-take to notice, not the reason for noticing him. If that makes sense. [ A small pause, and then, dubiously: ] Does that make sense?
... Yes, I suppose. (Mostly she's just disappointed she probably can't add big, cool lacy cuffs to this jacket. But she has a few more ideas.)
Subtle and complimentary, (she murmurs, taking note.) Alright. How about I gather up some materials and patterns and show you everything before I start to work on it? You can suggest adjustments then.
Or if... you've got a preferred shop or two-- [ or three or four, he doesn't care, really, ] --I suppose we could make an outing of it? Could carry your bags, at least.
Oh, that little note! Gela nods. Presently, her mouth is full. She took a bread roll from the dining hall and decided it would be to go. After she swallows and touches the corners of her mouth with her fingertips, she answers.
"Yes. Hello! Pardon the crumbs."
Ahh, she's put two and two together. "You're Lia?" She only gave things to two people she didn't know this year. "It's good to meet you."
"Well, I was wondering about-" She rummages and pulls out the tea.
"-this. What is it?" She hears herself and holds up a hand reassuring that she isn't stupid, "I gather it is tea, but what are the properties it contains?"
Lia is trying to be polite. She doesn't want to accuse anyone of poisoning her, after all it could be innocent.
She looks at it, taking the little jar from Lia. She made a good amount of these and took them around to everybody, which one did she get again...? Oh yes! She hands it back.
"It's a blend that I made, and it is for good health."
Gela has to think for a moment. Then she recites slowly, with a few pauses in-between as she remembers, "It was black tea leaves, flower petalsβrose, to be specific, a nice pink one from the gardensβa pinch of dried elfroot... pine needles, mint and dandelion root.
"You have to promise you won't tell anybody. The recipe is secret."
"Just a pinch," Gela repeats, but she's smiling. They both know what the pinch of elfroot is for.
"It's a secret because if everybody knew it, they would also make it, and then I'd never come across the ingredients as handily as I usually do." And because it would keep her from gifting it to anybody, but she won't say that. It would sound awful aloud.
Something occurs to her when Lia asks her next question. Gela's smile drops off. "Are you worried about the taste? I promise it isn't so bad. You get used to it."
And that way she can talk more about how it all works and how she made it... really, this is her ideal outcome. She says, "Come to the dining hall with me, and we can take some cups and hot water."
( a sampler selection of teas from a specialty shop (shoppe, even) in hightown, in a fine wooden box with segments for each tea. tied to the box, with ribbon, a brief note: )
Mademoiselle Baynrac,
I wish to express my sincerest apologies for both my behaviour during the debacle immediately after our first experience of Granitefell and the inexcusable delay in my acknowledging it. During a difficult time for us all, you were kind and patient; I regret that I was not. My treatment of you was wholly undeserved and will not be repeated.
(It is briefly remarkable to Gela that a year ago she would have ducked, frightened, underneath of this question, dodged it entirely, and then wondered for days afterwards what had lead GwΓ«naelle to believe that of her.
I don't know if that's how I'd put it, but you're not wrong. I've already asked Orlov and Carsus, but I have this book I need to translate β myself β so I need to learn the language, and I thought I'd make use of the resource that is, well, you. And them. If you're up for it?
( this doesn't sound like work. gwenaΓ«lle, very likely, would approach a professional necessity differently than this. )
( with the air of having relaxed a little for getting her way thus far: ) Cedric suggested dinners for the four of us; he's a bit worried Vanya doesn't get out enough. Their schedules won't be too challenging to coordinate, but if you're free a particular evening...?
( vanya "i have guard duty that night" orlov vs gwenaΓ«lle "not any more you don't" baudin, we all know who's winning. )
Happily, they're acquainted. The materials have been generously donated, so they're not an exact match for Doctor Farnon's waistcoat, but I imagine the thought will count.
I've no quarrel with the full rate. I trust that smaller stitches will cause you headache enough, particularly when I'm stealing you from other duties.
My other duties, currently, are sweet-talking many many people who live near our new eluvian placements to see if they're potential trade run candidates... So I appreciate the distraction, actually.
And I think I may have a button small enough to act as embelishment!
I haven't made it that far but I was thinking we should come up with some questionnaire, and I'd like to talk to the spymaster about it. I have to admit that maintaining relationships is what I'm best at, rather than brokering new ones.
She'll have ideas, and I daresay we need that maintenance more than anything just now. Friends are fickle things in war.
To that end, I'd ask to be kept abreast of those screened out of consideration. Particularly those with questionable ties. It may be of use in tracking Venatori connections through the South. We've a number of profiteers whose deals need be shut or diverted.
I'm finding that out. It's hard if we're hit like we were with the tower, people β it's not that they lose faith but that they imagine our coin being hit next and going into the sea, or something.
Of course. Every acquisition is special in the eyes of the Maker.
[ but less blithely: ]
I'm afraid we look a riskier investment than years past, but we're also further from our old ties. Separating from the March has lost us security, and perhaps widened our pool of friends. They know we need to pay our bills.
It has widened. (The lists of contacts that she has for trade alone are significant.) It's a good thing, of course it is, but it makes for a lot of work.
(A chuckle.) I was supposed to be running my parent's business after their retirement. You know? This is much bigger than that.
Trademaster Baynrac, Quartermaster Tavane speaking. [ does she sound very fancy and formal, she's trying to. she's also laughing, a little, because it's silly, but they are very serious business people doing very serious business, hmph. ] Are you as fed up with this paper shortage as I am?
Quartermaster Tavane, (rolls quite nicely off the tongue actually,) I am at my wit's end about the paper shortage. If we don't do something about it very soon I may write a letter to my brother on the shirt of a colleague and send them to Cumberland.
Less a plan, more a loose idea, [ apologetically, but hey, a loose idea is better than nothing, right? ]
With the eluvians opening up access to more cities, we must be closer to some new logging sites, or even paper mills. We can do some investigating of the areas around each of our eluvians, and if there's a paper mill nearby, you can negotiate a contract with them, and if there's a logging area, we can work on convincing someone to make a paper mill. We're not insignificant business, after all, not enough to support a whole mill but enough to start one, surely.
Until then, we can use our scrap to make our own paper, but we'll need specialized equipment. It won't be good quality, nor enough to support us in the long run, but better than nothing.
My first thought is that convincing somebody to make us a paper mill will require more coin than it could be worth. We may have to argue for the funding. And I wonder β we have many people here who like to make complicated things by themselves... (that's what Research is for, right?)
But, I must confess, I don't really know what goes on to make paper. I presume trees are involved? It is very difficult?
[ a hum of considerationβgela raises good pointsβand then an ah! of epiphany. ]
It mightn't be as difficult to convince anyone as you're imaginingβI wasn't here at the time, but when Tantervale fell to the Venatori, didn't a number of refugees make it here? There is the Planasene nearby, we may be able to induce them to restart their business, I imagine that would be preferable to whatever they're doing now. I wonder what they would need...
As for what goes into it, I don't know how it works as a business, but I know the basic process! Wood pulp is suspended in water, then pulled up through a screen. Once that screen dries, you have a sheet of paper! That's what I meant by using our own scrap to make new paper, we can turn anything we have that we're not using back into pulp and then screen and dry it for new paper. It's not difficult, just time-consuming.
There is also parchment as a possibility, we could talk to butchers and see about contracting for cow and pig skins!
Oh, I β yes, that does make sense. You do have a plan in mind!
(And now she is trying to imagine this process for a moment, hence the silence. How is the wood pulp 'pulled up'? How do you get the pulp...? Maybe it doesn't matter. Gela gathers her hair back from her face as she's thinking, twisting it, bringing it against her neck.) If you understand the process well enough to teach it to someone else, I could... find some volunteers, or set up a roster.
How much would they all hate us if we made it mandatory, do you think?
That would encourage people to be more succint in their writings...
How about: we see how many volunteers we get for now and deal with the idea of a roster later. People could be more interested in the process than we think.
As for new contracts, how did you want to proceed? That's more your purview than mine, so I'm happy to be directed however you wish. I think we have quite a few good options available to us!
A perfectly equitable division of labor, I think! I can have a suite of pitches ready in... oh, probably two weeks? Maybe a month? Depending on how aggressive we want to be about resolving this.
[ ness would like to be Very Aggressive, but she won't hold gela to her standards. ]
She and Gela have managed a few knitting lessons, here and there, though both of them are busy enough that meeting regularly has been somewhat haphazard. Today, though, she has her (metaphorical) Division Head hat on when she goes to track Gela down. Her demeanor isn't stern, or even worried, but the subject on her mind is a bit heavier than how to purl through the back loop.
She tries a few of Gela's usual haunts, in no rush. (She could always use the sending crystal if it was time-sensitive.) Given the autumn weather, Cosima may even be keeping her fingers crossed to find Gela outdoors where they can talk in the sunshine.
Yes, she will find Gela there. Tav is the one who tends the gardens most carefully, and while Gela knows that he uses magic for most of this, she still likes to put in a bit in weeding here and there by hand. She is, in fact, crouched by one of the beds now, carefully pulling out dandelions and chickweed, and laying them on a handkerchief in a row. The bright yellow dandelion heads make this arrangement seem quite cheerful.
She is humming to herself while she works and occasionally telling the plant she is weeding some platitude or encouragement, a "There you go," as she pulls something up, or a more frustrated, "Oh come now," to anything being stubborn.
"Hey," she says when close enough not to have to raise her voice but (hopefully) not so close Gela's startled. "You need another pair of hands? I'm not very green-thumbed, but I take direction OK." She comes to crouch nearby, evaluating the partly weeded bed.
"Yes, always," is a cheerful response, accompanied by a gesture to come crouch near to Gela that only flicks a bit of dirt in Cosima's direction. "The direction is: you pull whatever isn't this," the plants in rows, "up. And put them here, if you don't mind, because the duck will have them.
Cosima takes a good look at the plant, determined to avoid accidentally pulling up anything that should stay, and then settles down into a full seat, opting to scoot when she needs to.
"I'm okay. You know, always too much to do, but we've got a lot of enthusiasm from some of the new faces, it's nice to see. How are you, these days?"
"We do," she agrees, turning to the next patch of weeds, plucking carefully. "I've been speaking with Ennaris about reinstating our paper supplies; we're going to work on it together." She tucks her hair behind her ear.
"Fine. Busy, like you, and a bit tired but nothing too dire."
"You know, given Riftwatch, a bit tired isn't too bad." Probably a baseline for most of them, most of the time. But though her initial response is light, the next part is slightly less so. Not over-solicitous, but sincere.
"I actually wanted to ... we don't have to talk about it out here, if you don't want. But I wanted to check in with you about the medical condition you shared with me a while back." She glances over at Gela, up from where she'd been looking at the plants. "I know I should have been more diligent, and I'm sorry about that, it was. It's been kind of a hell of a year for you and me both, I think." What with the demons, and the attack on Kirkwall, and on and on.
"Oh," Gela says, in a little rush and with a smile. She isn't looking at Cosima, but continues on her patch of weeds, gently pulling one out slow so that its long, spidery roots dangle and drop soil. Some of them have been well established; this work should happen more often. "And here I thought you wanted to garden with me.
"It has been a difficult year." The demons, the attack on Kirkwall. When was Granitefell, was that a year ago or even longer? The last time she saw Jude. "I don't mind that you haven't been diligent. I don't have much to share β nothing has happened. Not even after everything." Her brow furrows for a moment. Her smile slips. She confesses, quiet, "That's what I don't understand."
"I do also want to spend time with you, for what it's worth," a hair softer. "Just ... multitasking, you know." She's aware of how thin she's stretched, and how it's meant neglecting friendships or potential friendships she might have nurtured before she got the big job.
Still. Focus. "I mean, I'm happy to hear that for your sake, but it does seem ... I can't imagine your condition is stress-triggered, if nothing has happened for that long." She'd seen the state of the four abductees in the infirmary after they returned, for one thing. "What do you think it means? That nothing has happened."
She drops her hand onto Cosima's, squeezing once in apology before she takes it back again. "I know." Sometimes the job has to come first.
But to get to it, sitting back on her heels, she sighs. Rubbing her cheek accidentally leaves a smudge of dirt on her skin near her nose. "I'm not sure. It's been four years now and I haven't... It hasn't ever happened again. It's good, of course, I don't want it to happen again, but I feel like I'm waiting for it. Like I can't relax."
She nods, sitting back on her heels for a moment. "I get that, for sure. Four years is a while, and you've certainly been through a lot of extreme stress in that time. Do you remember any particular trigger, from before?"
The two commonly known triggers from Cosima's home world clearly aren't in play, at least. But it's certainly not an area where she admits to expertise, even after looking into it some following their earlier conversation on the topic. So: Work the problem.
"... No," she says, voice lowering. They're sitting near to each other here outside and she can afford β has to β be quieter. "I've only turned once, when it happened for the first time. Not since. I think I told you that but I don't think I ever fully explained the situation to you."
She is being coy. Gela knows she didn't say a word past what she had to at the time, in Cosima's office. She is staring at the ground, the bit of weed she was supposed to be pulling. "I'm... ready to, if you think it will help."
"Hard to know, but it very well could. I don't want to press you, but if you're ready to talk about it... I'd be honored for you to trust me with that." She shifts from sitting on her heels to cross-legged on the ground, suggesting less of a propensity to get up or move away. "And if we can put your mind at ease or just give you a better idea of how it works, I want that for you."
"Yes." It's an odd space to tell the whole story in and in the same way almost perfect, because Gela has something to do with her hands while she talks; she sinks them both into the dirt in earnest now and begins to scoop a weed out, collecting roots with the dirt and sifting them out with her fingers.
"Okay." Okay. Her voice is still quiet, mostly steady. "The first time β the only time I've ever turned, it was against my will. Somebody from the Mortalitasi changed me into one using magic and I don't really know why." They talked to her about it that day they brought her back into herself but everything was blurred and so confusing. She doesn't remember it well: only the taste of blood in her mouth and an urge to run. "But I was stuck that way for a long time. And I wasn't myself, I had no control."
She's pulled up some plant with the weed. Hastily she untangles, pushes the plant back down into the spot where it was and cups dirt around it, tamps it back down. "There were others. I wasn't the only one he experimented with. I think there was," she shuts her eyes tight suddenly, "Three or maybe four."
"I'm so sorry that happened to you," is quiet and feelingly said. She hesitates for a moment, and it may be clear why in a moment. (She doesn't want to make this about herself.) Still, it feels important to say: "I know what it feels like to be someone else's experiment. Both where I'm from and here. It's not the same as what happened to you, but believe when I say ... it never becomes okay, but it also. It can scar over, eventually. Years later. I'm not saying nothing ever rips it open, god knows. But it changes, even if it doesn't go away."
She's paused in the weeding, watching Gela for a moment. Steady rather than horrified or pitying.
"But you have the extra layer of not knowing what's still with you. And that I think we can work on." A breath. "Do you know what happened, to the others who were there with you? Or anything about them?"
But the moment passes. Her fist, at her side, is unclenched. She opens her eyes again but not to look at the ground any more, to watch Cosima as she speaks β and Cosima is looking back at her steadily, which helps with the cold stone that is sitting in the pit of her stomach. The camaraderie, the understanding. She breathes in and says, "I didn't know."
In much the same way that Cosima didn't know about her; they both walk around carrying something huge, telling very few people. "I'm sorry that happened to you too."
As for the others, anybody else who walks around carrying something the weight of which Gela knows all too well, "I'm not sure. We didn't talk much before we couldn't. But they were probably other Nevarrans, same as me. And I may recognise one of them if we passed each other in the street."
"Thanks," genuinely, to Gela's sympathy. "Venatori here, and ... well, if someday you want the story about home, that's only fair. But I don't want to side track us right now." Not because she would hesitate to give Gela her honesty, but because there are more pressing things.
"I only ask about the others because it's possible they've found some more information. Or maybe not, but I imagine they have as much reason as you to want to understand. But if you don't know names or faces, probably too difficult to track down with our current resources, unfortunately." A beat, and then carefully but directly, she asks, "Do you know the name of the Mortalitasi that did it to you? Or anything about them?"
She nods and busies herself with the plants again immediately just to give her hands something to do, fingers pushing into soil so they don't leap to touch or twist into her hair, plucking at curls.
"They could have." Gela can't say she doesn't think about them or remember their faces from time to time. It would be bad to forget them entirely, these people she knows nothing about and is deeply, horrifically linked to anyways, so she remembers on purpose. "But they may not be alive." One of them was very old. Another was very young.
Her expression doesn't shift even though she hesitates before she answers the next question. "I know his name. His whole name β he said it once aloud while we were still in the cages and I repeated it to myself many times to make sure I would know it." All for these few moments, perhaps? She's not sure what Cosima can do with it, but she can still know. "Ferrant Marais."
"OK. Worth knowing. Hasn't come up as far as I know, which is unhelpful if you want to know his movements but good in that, like, Riftwatch wasn't secretly working with a psychopath without knowing it." She'll take that small win. "I can alert Yseult and Rowntree, in case we come across him anywhere. If we do, is it." A pause. "Would you like to know, or do you need to not know? If it comes up."
Gela isn't sure what to think. There's too much to think about right now, Cosima has given her endless what if scenarios she needs to go and imagine in full, heart-stopping detail. Again, she's stopped gardening. When she finds her voice it is soft but still there, still going. "Can I think on that and let you know? You can still alert Yseult and Marcus."
"Yeah, of course. I know I threw a lot at you, just let me know when you've landed on an answer. And like, I don't have any reason to think it's going to come up any time soon, other than that there's been a lot of Riftwatch contact with Nevarra recently. But it's a big country, it's not like it's inevitable we'll hear anything at all."
Cosima seems as if she might reach out, but after a moment she thinks better of it. Still, her voice is soft. "Thank you. I know it wasn't pleasant for me to show up and sour your gardening with these kind of questions. But I really do want to help, if I can."
Standing before one of the haphazard shelves, hands set on her hips (at least one broken bobbin in her sheets that morning). They don't need to get rid of anything, but β
She pushes her pillow and book aside, glancing automatically at the floor before putting her feet to it. This is the technique. "I'm sorry. I suppose we could... find places for everything. New places."
A system means nothing if Gela won't use it. She stoops to sweep a tangle of fallen hair between fingers. There are three of them in here, it's tumbleweeds no matter how you try.
"Things are in order from the beginning of the process." Sewing pins and needles, kept nearer to the ground (sometimes on it but in identifiable containers! Usually!); patterns on the shelf in a heap and in need of sorting; fabric on the chair and the desk and in the closet; buttons on the window sill.
It gives her a headache. The whorl of colour and goods packed tight, like some cramped voyage below-decks; seasick for hammocks and stale air. Claustrophobic as a market.
She doesn't say this. It invites questions. Instead:
"I think this is good way to damage cloth. They give you no workspace?"
"It isn't," Gela says helpfully, already beginning to gather things. Her question went unanswered but the way the topic was brought up in the first place makes her think things would be much better for her roommate if she tidied, at the very least, the buttons and the pins. "And I have an office but I use it for paper and not cloth."
See her half of the bedroom: it betrays the inevitable state of the office.
She adds, "I have too many things, I know, but I used to travel around so light, all the time."
An overcorrection, then. It's flawed. It's also mollifying. She knows the particular irritation of an absent tool.
"Where do you travel?"
Which must pass for: Good, we're agreed, or thank you, I appreciate it. Too proud to stoop to gratitude β not so much that she won't begin winding a loose skein of thread. If you spy a problem, you pitch in.
"I don't much any more but I used to. I came here from Nevarra and I stopped at most places in between.
"How about you?"
Doubtless she came here from some place else. She smiles when she sees the skein being wound. Gela doesn't need the promise of gratitude to want to be accommodating but the help is a silent little thank you of its own.
"Seheron," She's learned not to expect that name will ring here. The jaws of the Imperium eclipse its prey. "Big island in the north. Many more islands, before ocean and Qunandar. Places in between."
Across the ocean β no, never. She has paused in the middle of gathering buttons in one palm to tip into a jar, intrigued, and now sits up a little straighter in order to lean in. "What's it like?"
Dangerous, she'd told Strange. It is. That isn't what passes before memory's eye:
"Climb a tree and your head finds mist. The bark hangs red with rain, any time of year, but in seasons it is hard to breathe for sweetness of flowers."
"It sounds strange." Beautiful should be the first word here perhaps but it doesn't seem right to say that though the mist does sound ethereal. Looking down to deliver the buttons to the jar, "You're good at describing it.
"Do you feel... like you could be home, here? Somewhere so different?"
"Home is the Qun." That isn't a lie, but it's only one truth. You learn to hold them together, the pieces side-by-side. Dangerous, strange, home. "And your harbor has fog enough."
"Is it?" Gela looks up again. "I don't know very much about it."
And she's tempted to sit and wait for her to answer that prompt instead of pivoting to her past but Gela's missed her opening. She nods and caps the button jar. "Very different. Good-different. I liked travelling and seeing everything I could but it was hard to keep much money and I missed having the same bed."
as always feel free to change stuff wholecloth etc
Hand loose in her hair, unwinding a tangle of curl,
"S'pose it wasn't such a bad dream."
Hers. There are things he doesn't tell her, and nightmares are only one: Magic makes her nervous. Home seems fraught. And it's easier, anyway, just talking on the here and now. Last night's dream. Some stupid letter they both read, another supply disruption, the rat he saw run off with a whole and steaming slice of pie. Or that joke they tried to tell Gwen, the one that didn't translate. The weather. The meaning of a rock.
If he's careful, he can pretend that here and now all there is. That they both woke up this morning in their separate rooms, ordinary clerks, and nothing outside. His breath is steady. Maybe tomorrow, it'll snow.
"I got a strange question," Not the sort you ask, if you think the answer's yes. "And y'can say if you donβt want to say. 'S justβ¦ d'you feel safe here?"
In Riftwatch, or with him, or in this crowded little room β blessedly empty, for a few hours, of all those who share it.
Gela has her eyes shut to the start of this conversation, attention half on Cedric half on the edge of what she was dreaming about before she woke. The closer she tries to examine it the quicker it slips away, sand through the gaps between her fingers, and she shifts her body in disappointment, feels his hand in her hair. A sigh. "Mmm?"
Waiting, she couches her cheek against pillow and his skin. Outside of the blankets seems cold, a theory she confirms by skating a single leg to the edge of the bed and outside the boundary of warmth, toes instantly scrunching in dislike. Much better here.
Here. Gela, of course, selects the romantic option, eyes still shut.
"Why d'you ask? You're not anticipating an attack, are you?"
They speak Nevarran together in classes where they're supposed to, where deals have been made, but here, in this crowded little room and only the two of them in it, Gela speaks Trade. Soft, "I do."
"Your toes, maybe." An attack. Even buried under blankets, they're a force to reckon with. His own nudge at the ball of her foot in faint punctuation. Outside's cold, he oughta feed the fire. Cedric doesn't get up. "Good, I mean... 's good."
And it is. Something swells a little in his chest for the words. Just:
"I want that for you. I want you t'have that. And I worry sometimes, that being here. That 's hard on you."
She smothers a laugh into the pillow, delivers a half-hearted push to his shin with her foot and leaves it there, fitting it to the warmth of his skin. There is room here to ask him the same and not too long ago she would have, would not have let herself lie in a bed with anybody she liked without having said, but there is something about the Gallows and Riftwatch β Cedric β that makes her feel both safe and in turn, safer. Been a long time since she felt that way.
Slowly she turns her head to him. With soft sincerity, a small smile, "Thank you. I think I do. I didn't before I got here, but... it's different now."
Time has passed and things that should have happened have not. But she doesn't reassure him that it isn't hard to be here.
Propping herself onto an elbow leaves one arm free; Gela runs her hand over his hip. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm so much better now I'm here."
An exaggerated oof at the press of shin. Impossible to an feign: The prickle of skin behind her hand. Duller, here and there, across some old line of scar. Dull, and not gone.
(It's different now, she says, and doesn't say it's easy. The hard things wear her face, sometimes. Others walk in like strangers.)
Gela doesn't fight, waves pen before sword. And still, there's a notch in her ear to mark his own. There's the divot of flesh where full lips pull and part, the way they do when she's really pleased with herself. The pink press of tongue tip through teeth.
"Dunno if I ever stop worrying," He admits, and thinks how much cleverer this would be to drop. Better to thread an arm through that elbow and haul her in close again. He'd like that. Has some evidence by now that she likes it, too. Least when he finds the right spot. "Maybe 's just looking for problems."
For some way that it isn't better, being here. Gela's warm. Gela's happy. Selfish to puncture that, and maybe that's why he says it now. Just that it feels safe enough to.
"For some way 's not better, being here."
Better, and hard, and her skin is soft when he cages knuckle under palm.
"I know." She has noticed this about him β he looks to people he's thinking of and watches them, brings them into conversation, skirting around questions nobody wants to answer. He'll knead it slowly out of them once they relax a little instead and it's hard to do a thing like that, Gela should know. It makes you worry-prone. Once you know people enough you can notice when something's off. Intimacy is nice, has a price tag to match.
His brow is furrowed. She can see a line she'd put her thumb on if he didn't choose that moment to heap their hands together β his feel good, strong. Kind. Like he wouldn't press on a bruise unless he had to.
And yet he's missing half an ear; anchors himself the ground in armor; once left plates of food just outside her room.
"Tell me more?"
She could use the point of connection to pull him closer. She wants to. She could put her chin on his shoulder and skirt her knee up his hip and over it but that would cease, quickly, to be listening. And she wants to look at his eyes while he's talking anyway.
Messere Baynrac, [ this isn't a business call, so it isn't trademaster today, ] do you have a moment? I have a question, but it shouldn't take very long.
Ohβof course, sorry. Gela! I just never want to assume, um.
[ knots, she's been thrown off her game. what was she calling for?? ]
Ah, well, I'mβthat is, Messere Orlov has been teaching me Nevarran, and any time I ask him what I can do for him in return he refuses. You know, in that very polite way of his. I've decided to cook for him, since I don't have any better ideas, but I don't know much about Nevarran cuisine, so... I wondered if you might have ideas of what he'd like, or what he might be missing.
I asked Cedric as well, he pointed me in the direction of, um. Flatbread, fish, and spice?
You want to cook for him though! That's so nice. Yes, Cedric is very correct about the flatbread and fish with spices. My mother used to make us hand pies with whatever was cheapest at the fishmonger β though you don't have to do that, of course. Kirkwall must have a nice selection.
And you should make him candied sage leaves, or dates. Or apples, at a pinch, if you can't find either of those.
[ she should have known gela would be more helpful in this endeavor than cedric—there's the scritch scritch sound of quill on paper as ness takes notes. ]
Hand pies with fish and spices, perfect—any particular spices off the top of your head? Or, and I feel like this is probably a stretch, a recipe, maybe? I'm wonderful at following directions, less so at improvisation...
I don't think I've heard of candied sage leaves before, that's fascinating!
Anise, for the fish, and lemon and oil β egg for the sage, you'll want a sugar and egg wash to brush onto them, then you leave them out to dry for a day or two. They're good, you'll have to try them before you give them away to Vanya.
And yes, I can write you some recipes. They aren't complicated dishes.
They may not be complicated, but it's one thing to know how to make them yourself, another entirely to set down to try to teach someone else. I appreciate whatever effort you go to on my part.
[ note to self: make a batch of candied sage, just for gela. ]
Thank you, Gela, really. Between you and Cedric I should stand a good shot of not mucking this up horribly!
[ opens mouth to tell truth. realizes "because i stole a possessed skull from the necropolis and i wanted to speak her language" will sound Very Bad, Probably. closes mouth. ]
Well... It seemed useful?
[ she mentioned being bad at improvisation, right? ]
Oh. (Gela is having the same feeling an eight year old might have about wanting to go for a sleepover at a friend's house, never their own house (why would you want to come to my house when it's so boring there??).) Yes, I suppose it will in time.
[ and, mumblemumble weeks later, gela will find a bag of candied sage and a fresh, napkin-wrapped hand pie on her desk. it's not quite like mother used to make, but it's a very good attempt! ]
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Action;
"Don't know if you like rhubarb," he says, "But this is the first batch."
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"I love rhubarb." She'll go ahead, in that case, giving her head a gentle shake as she reaches for the jam and knife.
Bad dreams. Worse sleep! The usual. Give her a few moments... she slathers some bread thickly, and lifts it to her nose to sniff before she bites, and sighs. "S'good." Goes nice with the cup of tea she's got already, stinking of herbs, "Thank you."
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Rifters were pickier than expected, who knew? Jude smiles back, takes a slice of his own and covers it, bites into it. The taste covers the urge to sneeze at the strong scent of Gela's herbal tea.
"What are you drinking?" he asks. "Smells like you're trying to fight a cold."
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The contents swirl about. They smell very strong but taste even stronger, almost bitter. There is ginger in there, elfroot, and something red and clumpy floating around on the surface, maybe flower petals? Apparently you have to strain it as you drink it, with your own teeth. "It's for luck," Gela explains, "And stomach ache."
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"Now what are you cultivating luck for?" he asks, lifting both eyebrows, discreetly clearing his throat into his fist.
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Jude, perhaps, but she thinks privately that he probably doesn't need any luck. He connects so easily with other people, and that can often be a stand in for any good fortune. Plus, she has to admit once she's returned to her bread, "It's mainly on account of our approachin' Chantry guest."
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Jude returns to his own bread, doctoring each piece and putting it back on the plate, methodical and a little childish, maybe. He likes to eat it in exact ratios of bread to butter and jam.
He makes a noise in the back of his throat, somewhere between a grumble of assent and an actual growl, too deep for human hearing.
"The Gallows is shaking in their boots. Makes it hard to keep an open mind."
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"Yes," she admits, glancing sideways at him, "How much do you know about the Chantry, out of curiousity?"
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"Conflicting things," Jude admits. "Mostly to the tune of Templars and mages and mage circles. The story of the original Blights and how they came to be, the profaning of the Golden City, the basic story of Andraste. The basic tenets of the faith."
Bits and pieces and chunks.
"The Chantry itself and the hierarchy? Very little."
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She finishes what she's eating, licks a smudge of honey from her thumb. "I'm not so sure what it's like elsewhere; in Nevarra we have the Chantry, the templars, and they regulate the use of magic like they would anywhere else. I'm not sure they have the most political power, but their presence is huge."
Conversationally, "I grew up prayin' to Andraste. We all did."
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A neutral thing, to Jude. He's never much understood religion, but it means very much to some of the people he cares deeply about, and he respects it for that reason.
"Even the places that don't have a lot of Chantry activity, the attitudes are still there even if the Chant isn't. When I first came, I got to thinking that it was the culture. Still detangling what is and isn't."
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Whether or not they are the dominant power in Nevarra is... debatable, she thinks, but she won't ruin this lovely breakfast they're having by speaking of the Mortalitasi. Still, her brow is furrowed, gaze fixed on her plate. "Have you been asked to speak with her?"
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"Yeah," she says with a deep sigh, sitting back in his seat, spreading his thighs to put his feet firmly on the floor.
"The higher-ups want a smile and a warm welcome. S'pose we can't blame them for thinking I'm suited. You?"
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"Makes sense." Him being so likeable and beautiful and all, "Me too.
Do you think they chose us because we're still quite new?"
And not in possession of many deep, uncomfortable truths about Riftwatch?
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"No reputation to color things."
Either for good or for ill.
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"You've got a big family." He's spoken about it a few times, here and there. "Got any tips? For endearin' yourself to older women."
She might be teasing him.
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"Offer to help. Be on time. Do what you say you will. And if they give you advice, thank them."
All basics, but none of them have ever steered him wrong.
"Sincere compliments. If you think something nice about her, say it out loud."
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Am I close?"
customer service Jude
"Everybody likes to hear they're right, but if you're not sure she's right, don't say she is, don't disagree. Ask another question, or tell her you hadn't considered that before."
irl snort
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"Be serious!" This is an important mission, Jude.
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action, backdated to [mumble].
And then she isn't, a plate set down on opposite her at the same table.
It wouldn't occur to Marcus to ask to do so, or sit down just after, despite that he never has before, certainly hasn't since the Dirthamen temple. He makes for a more ordinary shape out of his armor, less bulk about the shoulders in grey linen, greyer cotton, the faint scent of horse and hay about his person, and also he isn't half-cowering in a simultaneously waterlogged and dust strewn sunken temple bleeding from the leg.
He also has a tankard, and this stays in his hand as he says, "Evening," before taking a swig.
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"Good evening." She won't bother with her fake tone. After a momentary wobble, the fork completes its journey.
He doesn't know a thing... He knows what he saw, but it would have felt unbelievable to him, presented as messily and half-formed as it was at the time. And now, with his memories back, he remembers Gela has no magic.
She says, calm as anything, "How's your leg?"
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There is no uncertainty in his regard of her across the table. In the confusion of memory fragments in the oppressive void of knowing absolutely nothing else, it had been a war between doubt and restraint and fear and mistrust, given more to transparency on a day he'd forgotten not to be opaque.
Here, this is a little more like the guards' office, the candlelight, the focus set on her that isn't intending to flay back muscle and nerve for the answers they're disguising, but has an edge nevertheless. Studying.
"I wanted to continue our conversation from the temple, now that we've the benefit of context."
More context, anyway.
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A year, she's been here. She was doing so well.
She puts her fork down.
"Okay."
May as well make him work for it until the very end. "I'm assuming you have questions."
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With no lead weight in his stomach, Marcus pulls apart the half-piece of bread he'd dropped onto his plate. The needle-point of his attention dipping down to ensure he doesn't make a mess when he uses the stew to soften the cracked crust. A couple of rings glint in nearby lantern light, a fancy looking signet stamped with, perhaps, initials, and another of cheap silver and black stone.
They click against the tankard as he goes to pick that up too.
"Can you explain to me the memory of yours I saw?"
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Like a memory, of being in the woods, and hunting. Like an animal would.
She's been quiet for a little bit too long. Words jump into her mouth so she says them with no regard for if they sound at all truthful, clawing for a way out. "It's a dream that I have, messere, whenever I'm too tired. That's all. It used to scare me awake on the road."
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And it didn't feel like a dream. He drinks from his ale as he allows her explanation to fill the space between them. Measuring it.
"I know dreams," after a moment, setting down the tankard. "Mages who have endured the education of the south are well-versed in their make." A subtle shake of his head, a concrete certainty to it. "It wasn't that, what I recalled. It was a real thing. Again," is a prompt, for her to re-address the question.
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Again, then.
"I'm a shape-shifter," she says suddenly, sitting upright. "Like Jude is, or the man who used to live here, the one who turned into birds and dogs.
I'm the same."
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As he had suspected, then.
Here, Marcus doesn't immediately speak again. A silence settles, but it's of a sort of receptive kind, an invitation to speak more to the topic rather than a cynical front.
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She adds, "I don't like to use such power, if I can help it. I'd rather not, actually, I β nobody knows, about this."
He was the first to have met her. He will remember that she said nothing of the sort back then, so Gela likes to think this adds a sense of credibility.
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A few bites down, a hand back to his tankard. "I see no reason for you to declare yourself to the company," he says. Apparently, her claim has been accepted as fact. She is a mage. He has his biases. "And I have no desire to endanger you by asking it."
He tips the tankard slightly, a gesture. "But I'll need a measure of assurance from you. After dinner, will you come by my office so that we can speak frankly?"
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"Okay." Her voice is faint. She can't wrap her head around the magnitude of what she's just told him and what it will mean, for her. Gela doesn't dare start to wonder what Marcus will think when he inevitably discovers the truth.
There is time to take it backβ
And say what in its place? That she is a shape-shifter but not by choice, and she's putting the Gallows and its residents in danger by staying? He'll ask to her leave, or he'll lock her up and Gela doesn't want either of those things to happen. She should but she likes it here. She likes this little life.
She says, hushed, "You're the only person I've told," as if in explanation of herself, the sudden pallor in her cheeks. When she said nobody, she meant nobody.
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Marcus nods once at that. "Because you had to," he says. "Because I saw something you wouldn't have shared. Something like that could well happen again, with someone else."
A Templar, maybe, or any non-mage at all who can't mind their business. Studies her, noting the paleness to her skin, the hush in her voice.
"It's alright," he offers.
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But yes, he's right when she thinks on it. It could happen again, and with somebody who doesn't seek her out first for confirmation. The next person could go straight to a division head with the information or confront her in public.
She feels airless for a moment, her throat working.
"What do I do?"
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"Stay," Marcus suggests. "Work. Eat your food," is more short-term, granted, a tip of his head that seems to acknowledge he's likely spoilt her appetite, and is nearly apologetic for it. "I would have you consider speaking to more folk than only me, but it can wait. And I can make suggestions."
Until he has time to properly assess the risk. Or she chooses, in the interim between sitting here in the dining hall and meeting him in his office, whether she wishes to vanish across the waters. He would prefer she did not, but it would be a decently deniable means of a problem solved on its own.
"Is there something you would know of me?" A slight raise of an eyebrow. "For the sake of fairness."
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She won't run though. Gela doesn't know if she could begin to make herself do that, she feels inexorably tied to Riftwatch and her business.
A slow nod. She asks to have him speak to her, and then she doesn't have to talk back or think of good words through her churning brain. "What Circle did you come here from?"
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Something in her choice of question is faintly amusing, but it's hard to read in his expression, given towards subtle microexpression, a reflexive restraint. It is not so intimate a memory as the one he gleaned from her, but he will answer regardless. "Starkhaven Circle," he says. "As is Tsenka, if you know her. I was taken there when I was young, nine or so." Although she has been put off her food, he continues with his own, now disassembling the second bit of bread on his plate. "And kept there for fourteen years.
"And then I came here," and he gestures, a little, with the bread piece, "to the Gallows, while it was still a Circle itself. The Starkhaven one had suffered a fire, so we were all relocated until it was rebuilt. We returned once it was, and then burned it down again. The rebellion. No Circles, after that."
Ever again, in his tone, but he scarcely need press that point.
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A pang of sympathy draws her brows together momentarily.
"You've come a long way."
And he doesn't want to go back, ever. That much is obvious, and that's a feeling that Gela understands very well.
"When did you know you could do it?"
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But there's utility in sharing. A sense of even-handedness, as he'd said. A sense of dismantling preconception, and maybe just giving her a moment out of the focus of the conversation, as pale as she'd gone. He takes a bite of food, again, more pragmatic than polite in table manners.
"Perhaps a few days before I was taken to the Circle," Marcus says. "There was an accident by the fireplace, just some minor thing that went unnoticed. But I didn't keep that secret very well. I didn't wish to be alone with it."
He nods to her, across the table. "You?"
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Gela looks startled. She can't think of an appropriate lie so she tells him what is true, which is, "When I was twenty-eight." That's when it happened, but that number is very, very far away from nine.
But perhaps it's not uncommon? She doesn't offer an anecdote to go along with it.
"You won't tell anyone of this. Will you?"
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Studies her, as if truly thinking about it in the moment, then says, "I don't wish to," as he scrapes a fork around his plate and then lays it down. "But the memory I took from you indicated that you aren't in complete possession of your abilities." And so, her having come into them at the late age of twenty-eight might make some sense, for better or for worse.
"I require assurance you aren't anymore a danger to yourself and those around you," as he collects up his things. The table creaks as he uses it to lever himself to his feet. "My office, when you're done eating."
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But he doesn't. At least not knowingly. The thing he says about her not being in control of her abilities is certainly a blow whether he knows it or not. Gela watches him scrape his fork around the plate and feels airless, holds herself perfectly still. It's so difficult to be in this conversation. She feels exhausted actually, like she needs to go and lay down. Being told to come to his office is truly the final straw for what little calm she has left.
Her voice accidentally skips when she answers. "Ohβ okay. Okay."
She doesn't dare to look at the plate she'd pushed away from herself earlier, still half-full. She's not going to eat it but she'll definitely sit here and pretend to until he's left the room, so she hastens to take up her utensil again and holds it loosely, looking lost.
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"It'll be alright," Marcus tells her, an altered echo, and no less true now than it was a moment ago. It isn't nothing, no, but it isn't everything.
And he'll leave her be. In his office, up in the central tower, there is some paperwork he needs seeing to while he waits. There is the faint expectation that she might run, now, and affording her the opportunity had seemed like the correct maneuver, but then, perhaps there'd been a better way to inspire some trust. That he comes up short on how he might have done so doesn't dismiss the thought.
It's hard to reconcile with a mage who mightn't trust their own kind. But then, an apostate, one who never knew herself to be one for a substantial portion of her lifeβ
Well, that's different.
She will find his door unlatched and cracked open, lamp light within tinged with cigarette smoke.
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There are a few options:
She could leave right now. Part of her thinks Marcus might have left her a gap between conversations for this purpose; he was there when she arrived unexpectedly in the dark, and must imagine her leaving in the same way. It wouldn't take long to pack. She's acquired things by staying here, but Gela remembers how to travel light. The only problem with this plan is that she doesn't want to go.
She could tell Marcus the truth in his office. She doesn't want to do that either, maybe even less than leaving. Somehow it feels too late to be considering it.
What Gela really wants to do is ask somebody for advice on how to get out of this, but she's told nobody of it. And she can't start now, there's no time... It feels like she sits at the table for ever, head in her hands, hating having fallen into this. Hating how attached she's become to this little life because now she can't bear to leave it.
When she arrives at his office she looks much the same as she did before, pale and resigned to her fate. No running, no hiding away, no asking for help... No casting magic either, so he'd better not ask her to do it. It's not that Marcus looks or acts at all like her mother, more that visiting him like this reminds Gela of her: a narrow room and chair, warm smoke and lamp-light, the sense of having done something wrong.
She finds she can't say anything to herald her arrival. She appears inside, without much noise.
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A nod is followed with, "Latch the door," and setting about ordering the pages in front of him so he can se them aside without losing his place. The cigarette he has burning is wedged between his knuckles, held with practiced ease not to get ash everywhere as he does so. There's a chair opposite his side of the desk, slightly angled aside. A second desk is on the other side of the office, but seems somewhat unused.
It smells of smoke and fainter still of dog, in here, but clean, orderly. When Marcus sets aside his work, he doesn't then go to retrieve a fresh piece of paper and quill, just shifts his ashtray to a more convenient spot.
A gesture to a brass case on the desk silently asks: would she like one?
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"... No thank you," to the offer of a cigarette, as she slinks into the chair opposite his desk, curling into it, one leg tucked underneath of her body. She puts her hands delicately on the edges of it.
There is a lot of work on his desk. She cranes her head to look at it, curious, and then suddenly he takes it and sets it out of her line of sight. She retracts herself, embarrassed, glancing at her hands and nails.
One of the problems is that, "I don't know why you're doing this for me."
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A minor gesture, hand tipping aside, a silent indication that he think it self-explanatory, but doesn't sound impatient when he says, "Because I was raised to consider mages something like kin, and taught to look after those who might require it. Because your business is your own, and I wouldn't be doing anything about it in an official capacity if not for my concern that you present a danger to yourself and others, given what I saw.
"Or felt," amendment. Bluntly, now that they are behind a latched door and stone walls, he says, "In this memory, you recall having killed someone. I need to know more."
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Swallowing, she says, "I want to know what you saw. Describe it to me?"
So she can figure out what to say back.
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"I recall forest," Marcus says. "Running through it. I had just eaten. A man, hunting him to the edge of a river, killing and eating him. There's no memory of that," has a faint tinge of relief, "only remembering it, and tasting blood. Feeling full. After everything, I remember it being like,"
and here he pauses, an ordering of thoughts as he taps ash from his cigarette, brow drawing at the centre. "I'd gone to Adjei's world, during that time in the Crossroads. I'd had abilities like he has, and I'd taken on a wolf shape. There were a few days where I'd become lost in it, its instincts overtaking any sense of myself. The ability to think as a person would. That's how this memory felt."
Maybe, somewhere in there, more reason that he is doing this. Something that cleaves closer to the bone and is more difficult to express than simply we are, both, mages.
"You said you don't use this ability anymore," is a prompt, turning the conversation back over to her for handling.
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If only she had gone to Jude's world in the first place. At the time she felt violently relieved to have not but in hindsight, it would have made a good alibi.
Pushing for words, to respond, she blurts, "No. I don't want to. I think it has power over me."
Which is the closest she's ever come to really saying it, out loud. It's terrifying and exhilarating. Unknowingly, one of her hands has come to lay on her chest, palm pressing down as if trying to hold something in.
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The rules in Jude's world were different. The wolf-like instincts in himself had felt separate from his own, but Marcus had been prepared to believe them in their explanations about what that was: an animal, born of the real world, as intrinsic to any of them as their own more human personalities.
Here, he knows it isn't so. That the likeliest explanation would be that of a young mage accessing shapechanging magics, but leaving herself open to spirits and demons who might exploit it. His study of her is careful, stern, but doesn't seem to bear judgment, if she were looking for it.
"There are those here who might help you," he says, quietly. "Whether you choose to engage in it again or not. Derrica has mastery over the conversing with spirits. She's from Rivain, where such traditions existβthe willing invitation of these kinds of beings. You know Adjei," everyone knows Adjei, "whose talents are distinct from the ones from this realm, but nevertheless, would provide you with empathy, and more, if you chose to pursue your magics."
He turns his cigarette to tap spent ash and ember into the crystal tray by his arm. "Enchanter Julius and myself have taught young mages before. And I know what it is to feel afraid of what I could do. If it's not why you came to Riftwatch, and chose to stay, you may wish to enter this reasoning into it."
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"What if I want it to be gone?" Not understood, or empathised with. She's leaning forward in her chair, nauseous and hopeful, ignoring everything else he's just said. "Is that possible?"
She has seen healers... None of them ever say what she wants them to, but Gela does understand that hers is a rare circumstance.
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"Traditionally," he adds, in the tone of someone who is not recommending the thing he is saying. "Under the Circles, a mage could request to be severed from their own dreaming mind, their sense of empathy and ego, in exchange for sealing themselves from their magic and the demons that hunger for it. It's a steep price. I don't think I've ever met a mage who truly required it."
But that, says the harsh tap of the cigarette, is a whole other conversation, and he didn't compel Gela into his office to lecture her on the Circles and their politics of fear. He says, "I still haven't."
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(Butβif she had something severed in her mind, could a skilled sever-er not reach inside and cut the wolf out, leaving the rest of Gela in? She will ask somebody else about this, maybe check the library for more information. It seems like a lead.)
"I'll speak with Jude." This is the first bit of truth she's told him. Jude should know about all of this. Really, he should have known some time ago; she should have been brave. Now she'll be confiding to get him on side, which is terrible, but they respect each other, don't they, Jude and Marcus, so this much may satisfy Marcus enough to leave Gela to her own devices. It will buy her some time.
She chooses some more words, working through them carefully. "It's very kind of you to be concerned about me. I need to think on what I'd like to do before I try to speak with Enchanter Julius, or yourself, about practice taking place. Do you mind?"
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Marcus does not give much away, habitually, but there's some quality in accepting what she says even besides the nod that says he doesn't mind. Something he was seeking, and has been given.
"Very well," he says. "Seek me when you're ready."
That he may seek her before she is is a possibility, but not one he feels the need to articulate. Instead;
"Unless there's anything you require of me, you can go."
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She tries not to scramble up from her seat, instead rising slowly from it, giving her skirts a patting down with her hands to remove imaginary dust. Marcus is a very stoic person. He is hard to glean any details from and she realises that she is envious of this trait, because she tried very hard to emulate it for years and failed. Gela is completely unable to wall herself off in the way that he does. Little parts of her will always peek through.
"Nothing for now; I'll call if anything occurs." That isn't really a lie. He's now the closest to the truth anybody has ever been, so if Gela has to say something to protect the people in the Gallows, he will be the one to hear it.
"Have a good evening."
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It's not strange that the two of them are both there at the same time—Clarisse almost never skips meals, and Gela seems to like hanging out in here—but while Clarisse isn't opposed to sitting with someone if they invite her to, she's not typically rushing over to initiate conversation.
Maybe she's overthinking this.
"If you had to apologize to somebody, how would you do it?"
Also, hello.
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Yes, no?
"I'd probably just tell them 'I'm sorry', and nicely. How come?"
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"It's nothing specific. I just realized I never... learned?" She's fully aware that her answer sounds ridiculous. Six year olds know how to say they're sorry. But she continues on anyway. "I'm very good at being a soldier, but if you want to do anything more than that, you need to know how to talk to people. And you're in diplomacy, so that's your expertise, right?"
It's over-simplifying them both, but she's not the best at this shit, clearly.
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Gela pushes it toward her with her fingertips, privately delighted that Clarisse came to ask her about this.
"It is." And she's happy to help. She adds, "I think that, when you're looking for a proper, meaningful apology, it helps to say what you did wrong. If you say 'I'm sorry', vaguely, it might cause the other person to wonder if you even know what you're so sorry about."
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"So instead of saying 'sorry' you'd say 'sorry for shoving your head into a toilet,'" is what she's getting from this. "But then what if they think you're only saying what they want to hear? Like—what if they don't believe you?"
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Not ideal, of course, but it happens.
She adds, "And then you never approach that person while they're near a toilet again, unless they get the wrong idea."
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"All right." Clarisse sounds a little bit mystified, like all of this has never occurred to her before. Is it that easy for everybody else? Has it been that easy the whole time, and she's just been making life harder for herself?
She sips her tea. It's good.
"Does it embarrass you?" she asks, without intending to. "When you apologize to someone?"
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Hmm.
She says, "You have siblings, don't you?" Gela has never said the word sorry more to anybody else.
And, "Sometimes, yes. Especially when what I've done is really bad."
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And then: You have siblings, don't you?
Clarisse screws up her face, trying to think of a way to answer the question honestly but without making it sound unhinged. There really isn't one.
"Technically, yes. But I didn't grow up with them. We only got brought to camp once we were old enough, and we all lived together there, but it wasn't like..." She shrugs one shoulder. A family. "We were like an army."
A small army. Made up entirely of teenagers.
"I wouldn't apologize to one of them any more than Flint would apologize to me."
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That's a little sad to her, siblings who aren't really family. Growing up alone, then joining an army. "That makes sense as to why you're out of practice, then.
But the Commander would apologise to you, if he thought it were necessary. Wouldn't he?"
Actually, she doesn't know Flint. Maybe he wouldn't? She thinks that Byerly certainly would if the situation called for it. Musing, now, "It's so much harder to say sorry to people who outrank you, I think. It's hard to make it seem like anything other than groveling."
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Anyway.
"I guess I find it hard no matter who I'm talking to," she mumbles. "If I outrank them, it makes me look weak. If they outrank me, like you said, it's groveling." Uuuughh, why is this shit so annoying?
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She holds her thoughtful expression for a moment before her nose scrunches up.
"Too cheesy?"
Might be, huh.
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Look, Clarisse isn't going to save anyone's feelings here, but at the same time she's not sure she totally disagrees with Gela's assessment. Maybe there's some middle ground she can land on, someday.
She chews her bottom lip, holding onto the cup of tea with both hands until the heat starts to hurt her palms. "My father would disagree with you. And for him, being weak is the worst thing you can be. 'Anything cracked will shatter at a touch.'" She exhales slowly. "I'm trying to figure out how much of what he told me is bullshit, but it's hard."
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"I think a lot of it was." It seems important, to say this. "For one thing, plates crack and shatter. Cups too, or window panes.
But you're a person, Clarisse. We are more complicated than that."
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"That's what I'm learning."
Even saying that, for her, is huge.
"I feel a little like I wasn't..." She stops herself from saying taught; that's a step too far over the line. "Like I didn't know much, before I got here," is what she settles on.
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... What was she like at that age? Did she feel like she knew much? She's thinking of a different person, a Gela unburdened by bad luck. She sighs, and cups her palm around the back of her neck underneath of her hair, holding herself, suddenly uncharacteristically moody.
Eventually, this shift in tone relents. She straightens, and reaches for her cup. "If the best time to learn it was before you got here, surely the second best time is now."
So she's doing well. "What else are you learning?"
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She can't apologize. That's what this whole conversation has been about. She'd have a heart attack. She's looking a little sweaty about it already.
And then Gela seems to recover just as quickly, leaving Clarisse even more confused.
"That I don't have to take myself so seriously all the time, I guess." She takes a sip of her tea. "And how to, like... bake bread."
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She says, "I'm learning to make friends again?" Which is slightly embarrassing to admit to! "It was hard to make and keep them while I was travelling around."
You can't even write to people, when you've no permanent address. She hooks her finger around a curl of her hair as she's speaking and pulls it out, straight. When she lets it go again, it jumps back into shape and nearly gets in her teacup, but she doesn't seem to notice that. "And how to use a knife properly. Ellie is teaching me."
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The tips of her ears go red, but she soldiers on.
"Ellie's great with knives," she agrees. "You couldn't find a better teacher. Well, except for me."
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"So it's going well, then."
Presumably.
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"It is." She takes another sip of her tea, because at least the cup will hide some of her face.
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"Do you want to talk about it?"
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"We can talk about it," she says. "I mean, if you want to."
Please, she's dying to dish about it, but she doesn't want to be the weirdo who makes someone else listen to her talk about her relationship. Still, this is already a better reaction than she's ever gotten from her roommate, so it's a good sign.
"Ellie told me it came up with you guys once before. Ellie told me recently, I mean. But your conversation must have happened a while ago, because apparently you told her we should have rules, but she ignored you and now we're dating." Haha! Wild!
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And she has a feeling Clarisse does too, judging by the way she just sat up a little straighter in her chair and edged closer to the table. Gela leans in too, now that they're doing proper gossip, elbows up on the table.
She laughs instantly when Clarisse mentions Ellie telling her about that, interrupting delightedly to tell her, "Oh! I knew it! That's so nice. How long have you been dating for?"
Ellie hadn't said a word! Gela is making a mental note to bully her about it later...
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In her defense, it doesn't feel like it's been five months already. It's felt like it's gone by in a flash, and also like she's known Ellie forever. Then again, Clarisse is coming up on one year since she ended up in Thedas. It's at the end of this month, in fact. And she met Ellie pretty soon after she got here, and they were fooling around soon after that, so it makes sense, but—
damn.
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By then it was past of the point of rules. She imagines they fell for each other swiftly and without realising it, which is such a romantic thought that she sighs with her chin in her hand. "I'm so happy for you both.
Is there a story? Who said something first?"
She really does want all the details Clarisse, hit her with them!
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And unfortunately for Gela, Clarisse has had a while to think about all this and basically nobody to talk about it with, so she's gonna get the whole rambling mess.
"Ellie said something first. It was after she came back from a mission and we were hanging out in her room—" If by hanging out you mean cuddling in her bed, obviously— "but it honestly felt like we were together way before that. I mean, we went on a date during Wintermarch, in New York. We held hands the whole time."
She runs a fingertip up the side of her cup. "It sounds really dumb now, because we kept saying we were just friends but we were never just friends from the very start, you know? But I think we were both scared we were going to screw everything up if we said anything."
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Sleeping with somebody, wanting to move along into dating them, having to tell them that, it's very hard. It can feel so dramatic. Gela remembers. She pinks up suddenly, attention darting elsewhere, teeth pressing into her lip.
That Ellie said something first is very charming, especially since she was the one nervously telling Gela a few details out on the ice, that Satinalia. She says, knowing the answer already but wanting to hear it directly from Clarisse, "Are you very happy?"
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It's true, and maybe she didn't realize it until this exact moment. Not that she's happy, but how happy she is. Even rolling out of bed in the morning with the sun barely up, ready for drills and work. Even doing thankless heavy lifting, or riding out for a mission where she knows she'll end up dirty and exhausted and maybe hurt. Happy.
She clears her throat, a little embarrassed.
"What about you? You, like, seeing anybody?"
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She is, it's so nice to hear about things like this, it's something she's really missed while she was traveling. Gossip will go anywhere, but it doesn't much matter unless you care about the people being gossiped about. And like seeing them happy, and trying to bashfully hide it away. Cute.
To answer Clarisse's question, "No."
Well. "There's Jude, but it's not anything serious." Which she likes, very much.
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"Good for you. He's hot." And he makes good pancakes.
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Re: Ellie, who is a little young for Gela sure, but she isn't blind.
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"I think so."
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"You don't need to apologise to Ellie, do you?" Ooh, did they fight?
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Hell, it's already happened a couple times in the past, and while she likes to think she did a decent job apologizing (or decent for her, at least) she would still like to... be better at it.
Just in case.
crystal;
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But surely that's not all you want to ask me?
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I can. Do you have fabric you'd like me to use? Or do you need me to source some?
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[ He is somewhat aware of what areas require it, having utilized a tailor in his home world, albeit infrequently. ]
The material I'll leave to your discretion. The color-- I think he'd be most comfortable in something dark.
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What does he think of interesting buttons? And ribbons? And embroidery?
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It could work if it's subtle, complimentary... Something you might have to double-take to notice, not the reason for noticing him. If that makes sense. [ A small pause, and then, dubiously: ] Does that make sense?
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Subtle and complimentary, (she murmurs, taking note.) Alright. How about I gather up some materials and patterns and show you everything before I start to work on it? You can suggest adjustments then.
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Or if... you've got a preferred shop or two-- [ or three or four, he doesn't care, really, ] --I suppose we could make an outing of it? Could carry your bags, at least.
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Oh, really? You'd like to? We should, then.
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action
"Good day!" She says warmly. "Are you--" Lia holds up the note that Gela left in her pigeonhole. "Gela?"
Lia knows for certain that she is, but it is only polite to feign ignorance if they haven't formally met.
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"Yes. Hello! Pardon the crumbs."
Ahh, she's put two and two together. "You're Lia?" She only gave things to two people she didn't know this year. "It's good to meet you."
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"Well, I was wondering about-" She rummages and pulls out the tea.
"-this. What is it?" She hears herself and holds up a hand reassuring that she isn't stupid, "I gather it is tea, but what are the properties it contains?"
Lia is trying to be polite. She doesn't want to accuse anyone of poisoning her, after all it could be innocent.
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She looks at it, taking the little jar from Lia. She made a good amount of these and took them around to everybody, which one did she get again...? Oh yes! She hands it back.
"It's a blend that I made, and it is for good health."
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"Yes." She nods. "That you said. What is it a blend of?"
She invents something plausible:
"My stomach doesn't always agree with every plant, so I like to keep track of what I consume."
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"You have to promise you won't tell anybody. The recipe is secret."
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"Elfroot?"
She has heard tell that has potential properties, but not for poison.
"I shall not tell. Why is it secret?"
Lia, still a little wary, makes an offer.
"Perhaps you'll have some with me?"
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"It's a secret because if everybody knew it, they would also make it, and then I'd never come across the ingredients as handily as I usually do." And because it would keep her from gifting it to anybody, but she won't say that. It would sound awful aloud.
Something occurs to her when Lia asks her next question. Gela's smile drops off. "Are you worried about the taste? I promise it isn't so bad. You get used to it."
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"Maybe a little." She says shyly as if admitting something very embarrassing. "I didn't want to be rude."
She takes a breath.
"If you showed me how to brew it properly, it would help!"
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And that way she can talk more about how it all works and how she made it... really, this is her ideal outcome. She says, "Come to the dining hall with me, and we can take some cups and hot water."
delivered to gela's room.
Mademoiselle Baynrac,
I wish to express my sincerest apologies for both my behaviour during the debacle immediately after our first experience of Granitefell and the inexcusable delay in my acknowledging it. During a difficult time for us all, you were kind and patient; I regret that I was not. My treatment of you was wholly undeserved and will not be repeated.
Sincerely,
Madame de Cedoux
crystal.
What do you think about bears?
[ There is context for this question. She was just busy at the time, and forgot to ask until now. ]
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(Give her a moment.) I would most likely keep a fair distance from any that I saw.
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I would engage with such a bear.
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crystals;
1/3
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But they don't... let me try again.
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Hmm!
I give up.
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My turn? Knock knock.
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[ because they're in tents. get it. get it, ok, ]
Who's there?
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You invent that one?
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Do you have any siblings?
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I think β he may come here, some day. To visit. I'm trying to convince him.
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What do you think, would you say yes?
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crystal.
You speak the Nevarran language, ouais?
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How things change.)
I do. Are you in need of my services?
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( this doesn't sound like work. gwenaΓ«lle, very likely, would approach a professional necessity differently than this. )
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( what a dick (affectionate) )
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It may take you a while before you can start to read the book. (Especially because it's poetry... the layers of metaphor, the rhyme.) Is that okay?
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But I do speak three. I'm not unversed in how it works or how much time needs to be invested.
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( vanya "i have guard duty that night" orlov vs gwenaΓ«lle "not any more you don't" baudin, we all know who's winning. )
At my cost, obviously. You're doing me a favour.
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I'm free the evenings I'm not working β I will check my schedule for the coming weeks and get back to you, if that's okay?
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( maybe the latter. intimate.)
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I'll come back to you soon, then. Thank you for organising this, I'm looking forward to it!
crystals;
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And I do. Please, who told you I am a skilled tailor?
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(In all seriousness,) How small are we talking? (She is reaching for a notepad.) Do you have measurements to hand?
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[ is he currently manhandling a rat? no, he's guesstimating with his hands, like a gentleman ]
Nine inches in circumference. An inch or so of width for the thickest part of the arms. We needn't consider the tail.
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Hold on.
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To confirm: you'd like a waistcoat for a rat? I... suppose I could do that.
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And I think I may have a button small enough to act as embelishment!
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To that end, I'd ask to be kept abreast of those screened out of consideration. Particularly those with questionable ties. It may be of use in tracking Venatori connections through the South. We've a number of profiteers whose deals need be shut or diverted.
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Thank you, truly. I didn't even think of that.
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[ but less blithely: ]
I'm afraid we look a riskier investment than years past, but we're also further from our old ties. Separating from the March has lost us security, and perhaps widened our pool of friends. They know we need to pay our bills.
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(A chuckle.) I was supposed to be running my parent's business after their retirement. You know? This is much bigger than that.
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(And she still sounds just as casually optimistic when she says,) No, that ship has sailed. My younger brother'll have the job now.
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Do you have any siblings?
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crystal;
Trademaster Baynrac, Quartermaster Tavane speaking. [ does she sound very fancy and formal, she's trying to. she's also laughing, a little, because it's silly, but they are very serious business people doing very serious business, hmph. ] Are you as fed up with this paper shortage as I am?
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You've a plan?
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Less a plan, more a loose idea, [ apologetically, but hey, a loose idea is better than nothing, right? ]
With the eluvians opening up access to more cities, we must be closer to some new logging sites, or even paper mills. We can do some investigating of the areas around each of our eluvians, and if there's a paper mill nearby, you can negotiate a contract with them, and if there's a logging area, we can work on convincing someone to make a paper mill. We're not insignificant business, after all, not enough to support a whole mill but enough to start one, surely.
Until then, we can use our scrap to make our own paper, but we'll need specialized equipment. It won't be good quality, nor enough to support us in the long run, but better than nothing.
So... what do you think?
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But, I must confess, I don't really know what goes on to make paper. I presume trees are involved? It is very difficult?
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[ a hum of considerationβgela raises good pointsβand then an ah! of epiphany. ]
It mightn't be as difficult to convince anyone as you're imaginingβI wasn't here at the time, but when Tantervale fell to the Venatori, didn't a number of refugees make it here? There is the Planasene nearby, we may be able to induce them to restart their business, I imagine that would be preferable to whatever they're doing now. I wonder what they would need...
As for what goes into it, I don't know how it works as a business, but I know the basic process! Wood pulp is suspended in water, then pulled up through a screen. Once that screen dries, you have a sheet of paper! That's what I meant by using our own scrap to make new paper, we can turn anything we have that we're not using back into pulp and then screen and dry it for new paper. It's not difficult, just time-consuming.
There is also parchment as a possibility, we could talk to butchers and see about contracting for cow and pig skins!
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(And now she is trying to imagine this process for a moment, hence the silence. How is the wood pulp 'pulled up'? How do you get the pulp...? Maybe it doesn't matter. Gela gathers her hair back from her face as she's thinking, twisting it, bringing it against her neck.) If you understand the process well enough to teach it to someone else, I could... find some volunteers, or set up a roster.
How much would they all hate us if we made it mandatory, do you think?
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Hmmm.
[ oh no, ness has amused herself. ]
We could say it's not mandatory, but whatever paper one wants to use beyond a certain ration, one must make for themself.
[ this kind of mostly hurts ness and hermione... but it's also a funny way to get everyone to pull paper making duty. ]
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How about: we see how many volunteers we get for now and deal with the idea of a roster later. People could be more interested in the process than we think.
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That sounds fair, yes.
As for new contracts, how did you want to proceed? That's more your purview than mine, so I'm happy to be directed however you wish. I think we have quite a few good options available to us!
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[ ness would like to be Very Aggressive, but she won't hold gela to her standards. ]
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action; nowish
She tries a few of Gela's usual haunts, in no rush. (She could always use the sending crystal if it was time-sensitive.) Given the autumn weather, Cosima may even be keeping her fingers crossed to find Gela outdoors where they can talk in the sunshine.
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She is humming to herself while she works and occasionally telling the plant she is weeding some platitude or encouragement, a "There you go," as she pulls something up, or a more frustrated, "Oh come now," to anything being stubborn.
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"How are you?"
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"I'm okay. You know, always too much to do, but we've got a lot of enthusiasm from some of the new faces, it's nice to see. How are you, these days?"
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"Fine. Busy, like you, and a bit tired but nothing too dire."
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"I actually wanted to ... we don't have to talk about it out here, if you don't want. But I wanted to check in with you about the medical condition you shared with me a while back." She glances over at Gela, up from where she'd been looking at the plants. "I know I should have been more diligent, and I'm sorry about that, it was. It's been kind of a hell of a year for you and me both, I think." What with the demons, and the attack on Kirkwall, and on and on.
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"It has been a difficult year." The demons, the attack on Kirkwall. When was Granitefell, was that a year ago or even longer? The last time she saw Jude. "I don't mind that you haven't been diligent. I don't have much to share β nothing has happened. Not even after everything." Her brow furrows for a moment. Her smile slips. She confesses, quiet, "That's what I don't understand."
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Still. Focus. "I mean, I'm happy to hear that for your sake, but it does seem ... I can't imagine your condition is stress-triggered, if nothing has happened for that long." She'd seen the state of the four abductees in the infirmary after they returned, for one thing. "What do you think it means? That nothing has happened."
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But to get to it, sitting back on her heels, she sighs. Rubbing her cheek accidentally leaves a smudge of dirt on her skin near her nose. "I'm not sure. It's been four years now and I haven't... It hasn't ever happened again. It's good, of course, I don't want it to happen again, but I feel like I'm waiting for it. Like I can't relax."
It never goes away.
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The two commonly known triggers from Cosima's home world clearly aren't in play, at least. But it's certainly not an area where she admits to expertise, even after looking into it some following their earlier conversation on the topic. So: Work the problem.
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She is being coy. Gela knows she didn't say a word past what she had to at the time, in Cosima's office. She is staring at the ground, the bit of weed she was supposed to be pulling. "I'm... ready to, if you think it will help."
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"Okay." Okay. Her voice is still quiet, mostly steady. "The first time β the only time I've ever turned, it was against my will. Somebody from the Mortalitasi changed me into one using magic and I don't really know why." They talked to her about it that day they brought her back into herself but everything was blurred and so confusing. She doesn't remember it well: only the taste of blood in her mouth and an urge to run. "But I was stuck that way for a long time. And I wasn't myself, I had no control."
She's pulled up some plant with the weed. Hastily she untangles, pushes the plant back down into the spot where it was and cups dirt around it, tamps it back down. "There were others. I wasn't the only one he experimented with. I think there was," she shuts her eyes tight suddenly, "Three or maybe four."
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She's paused in the weeding, watching Gela for a moment. Steady rather than horrified or pitying.
"But you have the extra layer of not knowing what's still with you. And that I think we can work on." A breath. "Do you know what happened, to the others who were there with you? Or anything about them?"
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But the moment passes. Her fist, at her side, is unclenched. She opens her eyes again but not to look at the ground any more, to watch Cosima as she speaks β and Cosima is looking back at her steadily, which helps with the cold stone that is sitting in the pit of her stomach. The camaraderie, the understanding. She breathes in and says, "I didn't know."
In much the same way that Cosima didn't know about her; they both walk around carrying something huge, telling very few people. "I'm sorry that happened to you too."
As for the others, anybody else who walks around carrying something the weight of which Gela knows all too well, "I'm not sure. We didn't talk much before we couldn't. But they were probably other Nevarrans, same as me. And I may recognise one of them if we passed each other in the street."
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"I only ask about the others because it's possible they've found some more information. Or maybe not, but I imagine they have as much reason as you to want to understand. But if you don't know names or faces, probably too difficult to track down with our current resources, unfortunately." A beat, and then carefully but directly, she asks, "Do you know the name of the Mortalitasi that did it to you? Or anything about them?"
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"They could have." Gela can't say she doesn't think about them or remember their faces from time to time. It would be bad to forget them entirely, these people she knows nothing about and is deeply, horrifically linked to anyways, so she remembers on purpose. "But they may not be alive." One of them was very old. Another was very young.
Her expression doesn't shift even though she hesitates before she answers the next question. "I know his name. His whole name β he said it once aloud while we were still in the cages and I repeated it to myself many times to make sure I would know it." All for these few moments, perhaps? She's not sure what Cosima can do with it, but she can still know. "Ferrant Marais."
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Gela isn't sure what to think. There's too much to think about right now, Cosima has given her endless what if scenarios she needs to go and imagine in full, heart-stopping detail. Again, she's stopped gardening. When she finds her voice it is soft but still there, still going. "Can I think on that and let you know? You can still alert Yseult and Marcus."
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Cosima seems as if she might reach out, but after a moment she thinks better of it. Still, her voice is soft. "Thank you. I know it wasn't pleasant for me to show up and sour your gardening with these kind of questions. But I really do want to help, if I can."
actionspam, vague timing;
Standing before one of the haphazard shelves, hands set on her hips (at least one broken bobbin in her sheets that morning). They don't need to get rid of anything, but β
"It will have a place."
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Gela sits up, hair loose. Glancing from the hands on hips to the shelves she says, "I know where everything is."
Boldly.
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She pushes her pillow and book aside, glancing automatically at the floor before putting her feet to it. This is the technique. "I'm sorry. I suppose we could... find places for everything. New places."
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"Tell me why it is where it is now."
A system means nothing if Gela won't use it. She stoops to sweep a tangle of fallen hair between fingers. There are three of them in here, it's tumbleweeds no matter how you try.
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Gela, pointing each out in turn says, "You see?"
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She's known some minds to vanish for a box.
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So many colours and textures. But, "I can pack things up if you don't agree. I don't mind it."
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She doesn't say this. It invites questions. Instead:
"I think this is good way to damage cloth. They give you no workspace?"
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See her half of the bedroom: it betrays the inevitable state of the office.
She adds, "I have too many things, I know, but I used to travel around so light, all the time."
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"Where do you travel?"
Which must pass for: Good, we're agreed, or thank you, I appreciate it. Too proud to stoop to gratitude β not so much that she won't begin winding a loose skein of thread. If you spy a problem, you pitch in.
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"How about you?"
Doubtless she came here from some place else. She smiles when she sees the skein being wound. Gela doesn't need the promise of gratitude to want to be accommodating but the help is a silent little thank you of its own.
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A sidelong smile in return.
"I do not go this far south before."
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Across the ocean β no, never. She has paused in the middle of gathering buttons in one palm to tip into a jar, intrigued, and now sits up a little straighter in order to lean in. "What's it like?"
The big island, in the north.
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Dangerous, she'd told Strange. It is. That isn't what passes before memory's eye:
"Climb a tree and your head finds mist. The bark hangs red with rain, any time of year, but in seasons it is hard to breathe for sweetness of flowers."
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"Do you feel... like you could be home, here? Somewhere so different?"
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"This is very different from road,"
A prompt. Gela had traveled light.
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And she's tempted to sit and wait for her to answer that prompt instead of pivoting to her past but Gela's missed her opening. She nods and caps the button jar. "Very different. Good-different. I liked travelling and seeing everything I could but it was hard to keep much money and I missed having the same bed."
as always feel free to change stuff wholecloth etc
"S'pose it wasn't such a bad dream."
Hers. There are things he doesn't tell her, and nightmares are only one: Magic makes her nervous. Home seems fraught. And it's easier, anyway, just talking on the here and now. Last night's dream. Some stupid letter they both read, another supply disruption, the rat he saw run off with a whole and steaming slice of pie. Or that joke they tried to tell Gwen, the one that didn't translate. The weather. The meaning of a rock.
If he's careful, he can pretend that here and now all there is. That they both woke up this morning in their separate rooms, ordinary clerks, and nothing outside. His breath is steady. Maybe tomorrow, it'll snow.
"I got a strange question," Not the sort you ask, if you think the answer's yes. "And y'can say if you donβt want to say. 'S justβ¦ d'you feel safe here?"
In Riftwatch, or with him, or in this crowded little room β blessedly empty, for a few hours, of all those who share it.
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Waiting, she couches her cheek against pillow and his skin. Outside of the blankets seems cold, a theory she confirms by skating a single leg to the edge of the bed and outside the boundary of warmth, toes instantly scrunching in dislike. Much better here.
Here. Gela, of course, selects the romantic option, eyes still shut.
"Why d'you ask? You're not anticipating an attack, are you?"
They speak Nevarran together in classes where they're supposed to, where deals have been made, but here, in this crowded little room and only the two of them in it, Gela speaks Trade. Soft, "I do."
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And it is. Something swells a little in his chest for the words. Just:
"I want that for you. I want you t'have that. And I worry sometimes, that being here. That 's hard on you."
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Slowly she turns her head to him. With soft sincerity, a small smile, "Thank you. I think I do. I didn't before I got here, but... it's different now."
Time has passed and things that should have happened have not. But she doesn't reassure him that it isn't hard to be here.
Propping herself onto an elbow leaves one arm free; Gela runs her hand over his hip. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm so much better now I'm here."
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(It's different now, she says, and doesn't say it's easy. The hard things wear her face, sometimes. Others walk in like strangers.)
Gela doesn't fight, waves pen before sword. And still, there's a notch in her ear to mark his own. There's the divot of flesh where full lips pull and part, the way they do when she's really pleased with herself. The pink press of tongue tip through teeth.
"Dunno if I ever stop worrying," He admits, and thinks how much cleverer this would be to drop. Better to thread an arm through that elbow and haul her in close again. He'd like that. Has some evidence by now that she likes it, too. Least when he finds the right spot. "Maybe 's just looking for problems."
For some way that it isn't better, being here. Gela's warm. Gela's happy. Selfish to puncture that, and maybe that's why he says it now. Just that it feels safe enough to.
"For some way 's not better, being here."
Better, and hard, and her skin is soft when he cages knuckle under palm.
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His brow is furrowed. She can see a line she'd put her thumb on if he didn't choose that moment to heap their hands together β his feel good, strong. Kind. Like he wouldn't press on a bruise unless he had to.
And yet he's missing half an ear; anchors himself the ground in armor; once left plates of food just outside her room.
"Tell me more?"
She could use the point of connection to pull him closer. She wants to. She could put her chin on his shoulder and skirt her knee up his hip and over it but that would cease, quickly, to be listening. And she wants to look at his eyes while he's talking anyway.
crystal; timily wimily backdated
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β And you can just call me Gela, Ennaris.
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[ knots, she's been thrown off her game. what was she calling for?? ]
Ah, well, I'mβthat is, Messere Orlov has been teaching me Nevarran, and any time I ask him what I can do for him in return he refuses. You know, in that very polite way of his. I've decided to cook for him, since I don't have any better ideas, but I don't know much about Nevarran cuisine, so... I wondered if you might have ideas of what he'd like, or what he might be missing.
I asked Cedric as well, he pointed me in the direction of, um. Flatbread, fish, and spice?
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You want to cook for him though! That's so nice. Yes, Cedric is very correct about the flatbread and fish with spices. My mother used to make us hand pies with whatever was cheapest at the fishmonger β though you don't have to do that, of course. Kirkwall must have a nice selection.
And you should make him candied sage leaves, or dates. Or apples, at a pinch, if you can't find either of those.
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Hand pies with fish and spices, perfect—any particular spices off the top of your head? Or, and I feel like this is probably a stretch, a recipe, maybe? I'm wonderful at following directions, less so at improvisation...
I don't think I've heard of candied sage leaves before, that's fascinating!
[ scritch scritch, scritch scritch. ]
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And yes, I can write you some recipes. They aren't complicated dishes.
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[ note to self: make a batch of candied sage, just for gela. ]
Thank you, Gela, really. Between you and Cedric I should stand a good shot of not mucking this up horribly!
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Can I ask you one thing before you go? I'm interested in why you wanted to learn to speak Nevarran.
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Well... It seemed useful?
[ she mentioned being bad at improvisation, right? ]
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It's going well?
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I think so! It's challenging to learn, but in a way I enjoy, and Messere Orlov is very patient with me.
[ swoon, sigh, isn't he dreamy? ]
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You'll have to let me know how it goes. The cooking and baking, I mean.
π!
[ and, mumblemumble weeks later, gela will find a bag of candied sage and a fresh, napkin-wrapped hand pie on her desk. it's not quite like mother used to make, but it's a very good attempt! ]
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[Benedict sounds both proud and offended, like heβs won something in advance;]
how do you feel about duels between members of Riftwatch?
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Can you find a resolution that sheds no blood?
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Ta.
[he ends the conversation, for now]