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[foxsays]

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[foxsays]

[If it had come from anyone other than Gwenaëlle there possibly wouldn't have been enough salt for her to take that with until she keeps going.

And going.

Araceli knows she's soft. Knows that beneath whatever masks she's had to put on for Thedas that she's never made herself hard, has never desired to betray herself that way; it leads to hurting worse after but here and now she has to swallow, hand pressed tight to her mouth when the words won't come, eyes burning. Of all the times she thinks but perhaps, well perhaps she needs it.

It takes a long moment for her to find a voice level enough to speak, to keep the raw wet note out of it best she can. (Doesn't quite manage it, doesn't find it in her to care, this is trying, this has all hurt, and this hurts in a better way, a good way.)]

There might be far more of us through rifts but if anything were to happen to us, there would always be you. Something to cast the eye on next. [Templars and Mages perhaps dealt with by the Inquisition, their gaze turns to the rifters, what else is on the list for them to work through?]

I've worked hard here. [Well she's not going to disagree, this is private, she doesn't need to try to jokingly deflect a compliment so as to not look as if she's rising above her station.] I've made myself a life that I enjoy. With someone I love. With friends. I'm trying to lay this out flat to consider as many ways in and out as I can, stepping back to breathe; if you say Thranduil is doing the same, that there's someone else to speak with then I can do that.

[As she wrestles with herself, the honesty that's been given thus far. Would it help to lay her cards on the table here and now even just between them for the moment?

She laughs, the sort of hiccuping thing that hurts when it comes out of her chest with the tears but it's good. It's out. It isn't snarling up in her head and her heart to take to bed with her into the bitter hours of the morning.] Yes. Yes it makes sense, I-- gracias, this means a great deal today, from you. I'm grateful to have you in my life to be able to speak so plainly so I can see things before me again. To have a plan.

[elegiaque]

Thranduil has the beginnings of one—I know he'd welcome your thoughts. And your hands, at that. Competence is in short fucking supply and I, for one—

I'm confident in him. I'd be even more confident if you were there, too. What do you think a strong bargaining position looks like? Talk to me like I'm a fool. I never did well, in Orlais.

( it's wry, more than anything else. practise on her, and be ready for the less sympathetic ears. )

[foxsays]

[There's a lot to be said for anyone a good couple of years removed from where they came from, forced to live by another set of rules or not at all (or, that should be how it goes, clearly there's the great grey gulf of a third option so many fall into or this conversation needn't happen.)

Whatever comes of it, comes of it, and if Araceli doesn't walk away as just a well-spoken thief doing well for herself to another then she can live with that.]

The advisors in Skyhold are those who still lead the Inquisition, and two of them were hands of the late Divine, Justinia. Sister Nightingale's lessons is someone unafraid to move when she must [Efficiency is crucial in a war, Araceli and Silencing them is the most effective option. The quiet severity of Leliana's voice in that moment, a lesson imparted to a girl under instruction.]

Right now, we swallow whatever there is. Let go of the anger and outrage in public. All of us compare to what we knew, but we can't draw lines down it unless it's together, for us as an Inquisition to say that conditions are unacceptable. Without a united front they'll find a way to set us all arguing amongst ourselves or making concessions within concessions; it goes hand-in-hand, the birthplace of the Game and the Chantry, growing up side by side, holding hands.

For starters: we aren't entitled to being treated differently, I was angry when I arrived, I didn't appreciate the suspicion, the hostility, but this is it for us. We show that we understand we are part of this world, beneath the banner of the Inquisition that follows a mandate set out by the late Divine. That the laws of Thedas won't be ignored by us because we think ourselves above them, inconvenient, not subject to them, or whatever reason someone might come up with.

[Araceli's still thinking this through so it's not as considered an answer, some of it too emotional than it should be but that's the point of something like this. Thrash out the argument to the bare bones. See what works. What doesn't. Have someone else give an opinion who'll be honest.]

Our argument can't be the same as a native mage for the destruction of a phylactery that don't exist yet. There's the idea perhaps that we might be serving the Maker's will by our existence, I mean to put that by Herian. What happens if the enemy were to take hold of our phylacteries as opposed to those of any other mage doesn't bear thinking about. I saw what they did firsthand, if we were found, made to open rifts...it's an idea.

[elegiaque]

( the scratch of pen upon parchment; gwenaëlle, bless her little heart, is taking notes. it's that last point that she snags upon, interested: )

Serving the Maker's will by your—

You mean, because of the nature of you. ( the lilt is barely there, but there's a question in it, a prompt. that is a thought that might well be worth pursuing, she thinks; it's the chantry they must appeal to, ultimately. )

[foxsays]

I had a conversation long before the plague that revealed the truth of us with Thranduil. About things I know. Suspicions harboured. Now they're confirmed with our binding that we're the same as the spirits and the Fade so why not put our heads together with that argument? Serving comes in many forms.

[This is hard to talk about. Her heart aches doing it; how many letters went into the sea? A hundred? More? All the things you keep from someone you love because there are worries enough here, you can't share all of them if you expect both of you to be standing.]

If spirits are the Maker's First Children, as the Chant says they are, and if we possess some piece of the Fade within us, if spirits witnessed something that was not what they so often see such as the aftermath of battle, then that makes us a piece of it. Not people from elsewhere. But something now bound to Thedas. No returning unless we disappear. I don't know enough of spirits but whatever happened during that plague near the end, perhaps on some less prolific scale. [Once she did keep track of it, younger, angrier, that they'd disappear and no one gave a shit about it.

Misguided youthful mistakes that she's corrected. Looked to what her future really is, where it lies. Where her heart beats now.] There's a way to do this though I don't know if everyone is going to sit down and stomach that line of thinking. Even if they must. The truth isn't the supper everyone wants, some would rather starve than have it.