#(arc) skychaser.

[makerbound]

A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief. ( from mehmet if you're still accepting, that is! )

deathless. (not accepting)

Part of her had always hated proverbs. She wanted to retort with a snide comment, ask if he’d eaten wisdom for breakfast, but the other part of her––the one that regularly nudged her to read light fare literature by dim candlelight in bed (she would need glasses before long)––paused, recognizing something in him that sounded at once romantic and forlorn and, above all, so achingly familiar it had her frown. 

It wasn’t hard to tag him as Nevarran; not only had Josie casually let her know about the Forsythia family come calling, but his accent would have given him away the moment he talked––just like it did with her, under that veneer of Orlesian-ness she had acquired in her nigh twenty years in Val Royaux. 

It wasn’t hard to tag him as Nevarran at all. It was harder, though, to pull on the threads of familiarity. 

Cassandra frowned harder. “…do I know you?” 

[makerbound]

I have survived but I have not been spared

deathless. (not accepting)

“Tell that to all those who are dead because of you!” 

[makerbound]

We obsess. It’s in our nature.

deathless. (selectively accepting)

“I don’t obsess. I only…observe.” Staring is another word for it, but her petulant tone carries perhaps more admission of that than her tongue ever would.

“Carefully.” 

[makerbound]

"In his own country, Death can be kind." (nevarran!beruthiel ofc)

deathless. (selectively accepting)

When Tigana and Mathias Pentaghast had been declared traitors to the Nevarran court, and convicted to die within the same breath, their children had been absent from the marble-tiled hall from which Markus did, and still does, his ruling. There had been no goodbyes; no heartrending children’s cries, no tears and last embraces. 

Before all that, she remembered there had been her mother: a whirlwind of crackling energy like a Vinsomer female flapping thunderstorms into existence. There were no closed doors where her mother went, and Cassandra remembered dashing after her, through open cracks and wide arches, past thresholds and down the stairs. And then––nothing. When Tigana had gone, the doors did not close. They just weren’t there anymore. 

Walls, naked and smooth. No blood and no tears. That was what Vestalus had bartered for them, convincing Markus he did him a favor, and whisked them away before heads would roll. Walls, to hold her and to smother her. That had been the kindness Death had visited upon her.

“If you meant to rouse the past, Inquisitor, let it rest,” Cassandra brushed her off with a shrug that was, perhaps, just a little too stiff and came a little too fast –– and unlike Berúthiel, she did not switch from the common tongue to the language of her childhood home. 

Death cannot be kind or unkind, cannot be this or that. It was life that was the dualistic force of nature, saying yes, saying no. Death only ever said yes.

[makerbound]

No one is now what they were before the war. // from the priestess

deathless. (selectively accepting)

“No, of course not. There would be no end to it if it didn’t leave traces.” 

Of course, it never truly ends, and it never truly changes them: From Arlathan to Minrathous to Val Royaux, the sceptre of Empire will be passed on and on, and soldiers like her will sweat and bleed on battlefields for causes that are just as often as they’re wrong. She prays to the Maker that she will always be able to tell the difference between the two. That, she thinks, is humbling. That, she knows, is within her power to affect. 

[makerbound]

"You have already done all of this and will do it again."

deathless. (selectively accepting)

“…and again, and again, if I need to. If I see it. I’ve tolerated many accusations over the years, but not that I’m blind to things that must be done. I can’t.” It’s a familiar credo: one that she’s spun, only recently, a chant of her and Leliana’s making, their shield against the world, their world, that would not understand why they must do what they do. It’s a sentiment deeply familiar to Cassandra: isolate a problem, rationalize a strategy to deal with it, declare it to the public, be met with ridicule––and be left to deal with it alone. 

[makerbound]

The first light on First Day has barely broken for the most is still settled over the moors of Skyhold and nestled in the gardens, and they may be the only souls roused ( he never slept, and perhaps she simply rises early ). He catches her hand, pressing bound parchment into it, another rough draft ( something to ring in the new year ) and he leans far up, pressing his lips to her cheek for the briefest of moments before backing away. “Happy First Day, take some time for yourself.”

She and Leliana had gotten up early together. She and Leliana had walked into the small, private chapel of Skyhold together. She and Leliana had prayed together. This is a first: a first year without Justinia, a first year away from Orlais in what feels like half a lifetime; a first year without a clear trail laid out before her.

“Varric, what– oh! Oh, what–” She never finishes that incoherent string that surprise burst forth because that kiss to her cheek shuts her up. That’s what those kind of gestures do to Cassandra Pentaghast, Lady Seeker, Hero of Orlais. If Justinia were here, she would smile. That thought is reason enough to smile in her stead. “Thank you, Varric. You should heed your own advice, you know– although between the two of us,” she has to admit, “you probably do more so than me, anyway.” Cassandra tilts the roll of parchment in her hand, examining it – and then her face falls. “Oh! I never got you anything– I didn’t think–”

[makerbound]

@peredhellen

“You have found yourself a catacomb of a library to call home!” 

The only thing missing now were the sounds: soft moaning from behind elegantly carved mausoleum doors, so subtle that its uncanny quantities were enough to drive you mad with doubt over time. Did I hear that? Did someone talk? Do they want me to talk? She did not have any songs for the dead back in her childhood, no more than she had songs for long-forgotten books and brittle pages. Cassandra ran the pad of a gloved finger along the surface of a wooden shelf. It came away draped in a downy layer of dust and grime. 

“What is the appeal of it?”