I'm tagging @dmonfoxfire, @marokiya, @brennacedria, @frenchy-and-the-sea, @himluv, @chocochipbiscuit and anyone else who'd like to do this! As always, let me know if you'd like to be added to a permanent tag list!
From @seaglassmelody: Hello hello! Sorry this is so late in the day, it's been a real whopper for me but welcome back to your weekly word game sponsored by @hedwigoprah and hosted by yours truly (this week!)
Adjective. Serving to alleviate pain. Adjective. Not likely to offend or arouse tensions. Inoffensive, often deliberately so. Noun. Something that soothes, calms or comforts.
This is a bit with Goldanna after the final battle in Denerim. I was thinking of not sticking it up because I really need to do a LOT more work on it to make it good, but then I decided that the point of doing these games is to just knock something out quick, and inspire more writing, so here goes!
The Denerim Chantry distributed tents to those left homeless after the battle. Where they got them, Goldanna didn’t know, but by the time she was at the head of the line, they’d run out and all she’d been given was an oil cloth tarp.
Well, she could make that work. There was one strong stone corner of her home left, and if she and the children worked hard, they could clear out enough of the rubble that they’d have the tarp overhead and to walls at their backs by nightfall. It was better than huddling in the Chantry yard with barely enough room to lie down.
It also meant they could be close to the cellar where they’d hidden during the invasion and where, even now, there were supplies enough to see them through until the promised food from the Crown began to trickle in. Three days now with nothing. People were starting to grumble about their new Queen.
“Goldanna?”
She looked up from the bundle of cloth to see Sister Avial. She’d spotted her across the crowd in the yard yesterday, but put her head down. She hadn’t wanted to see that wrinkled old prune of a face. She’d take what she needed of Chantry charity to keep her children safe, but that didn’t mean she needed to make nice with the Sisters. She scowled, shook her head, and turned to leave.
“Goldanna, wait! Please.” She put a hand an Goldanna’s arm. “Your children — they’re safe, yes?”
“They are, and I need to get back to them, not waste my time yammering on about them.” She tried to pull her arm from Avial’s grip, but the Sister held fast to the fabric of her shirt.
“Let me go!” Goldanna shouted, and heads turned around them.
“Your children, Goldanna, I just... I have something for them.” She whispered the last bit, as if to keep it from the people around them.
“They don’t need anything more than this from you and yours!” Goldanna hissed as she shook the bundle at her. The venom in her voice surprised her. She thought her hate for the Denerim Chantry had simmered away long ago, but memories of the orphanage had cast longer shadows than she thought. It hadn’t been altogether awful, but had been cold and lonely in the wake of losing everything and everyone she’d known in Redcliffe, and not one Sister had bothered to reach out to make her time there even just a touch better.
Sister Avial held out a small bag. “Please, it’s just a little thing. An anodyne for the little ones.”
“Then give it to me, and let me go!” If the Sister expected gratefulness in offering something to Goldanna’s children that she’d never offered to Goldanna herself, she was mistaken.
For a moment, she thought the Sister was going to say something, but instead she simply nodded, dropped the bag on Goldanna’s bundle, and turned away. Goldanna resisted the urge to spit at her back. She pushed through the crowd and left the yard.
At home, she told her children of her plan and put them to work clearing out the standing corner. Before she joined them, she opened the bag, and there, bright like jewels, were red and gold sugar treats. An anodyne the Sister had said. Comfort.
Goldanna could feel tears starting, and swept a dirty sleeve across her face to catch them. A few candies when her family had lost everything. As ever, Chantry charity was a miserable and cruel failure.
