#like yes my comms are open but I fear that I may end up swamped if they keep telling people to comm me 😅

[zombiesama]

*bonking myself with a paper towel tube*

STOP *bonk* STARTING *bonk* NEW *bonk* PROJECTS *bonk*

[sunriseoverastorea]

Ebonhawke is silent and still in the wee hours of the morning. Marea can see the entire city from the deck of her ship, spread out below her like a massive dollhouse, sleeping in the shadow of the mountains where the Crooked Kestrel is docked. A single figure here and there, darting through the sulfur-yellow glow of a streetlamp, likely up to no good. She shapes her right hand into a gun and points it at each of them, softly saying ‘pew, pew’ under her breath. She can barely hear herself over the idling hum of gears and steam and shifting wings, keeping her perpetually afloat, a gentle lullaby of mechanical voices. But she couldn’t fall asleep here, even if she wanted to. Nor on the bomb-splintered roof of her apartment, alongside her pets, or in the tall, whispering tree out in the Iron Marches, that has grown over Rajya’s grave.

She sits down less than gracefully on the edge of the deck, still adjusting to her bad knee. Her legs swing over the side, kicking chipperly through the air, and to her left she lays out her work for the night: a new cape, shoddily handsewn and almost completed, and a large plain sketchbook, accompanied by her box of scribing tools. She briefly runs the coarse wool of the cape through her fingers, feeling nothing, but imagining it to be soft and fluid, fuzzy and scratchy, all at once. Then she takes the hefty book and plops it on her lap, opening to the first page. 

“Don’t fuck up, Marea,” she murmurs, hunching deeply, getting her face as close to the page as she can. Her braids slip over her shoulders and hone in on her peripheral vision as she takes a black pen from the box and carefully pricks the end of it on the paper, licking her lips. “You don’t wanna tear pages out of this. It’s a record of your progress. If it’s shitty, it’s shitty forever.”

She begins to sketch along the top margin of the page, a smooth, elegant array of curving vines studded with leaves and blossoms alike, mimicking the flowers of Grothmar Valley. Her trip there seems like a world away, now--everything from before the Dominion came into existence does. In some cases, literally, in her year of barding in foreign taverns where odd variants of humanity with thick, musical accents listened to her tales of Ascalon, a fabled land with fabled cat people and legendary sorrow and beauty. But even since she came back--Raigar gone, then finding him a changed man from the one she left behind. Finding herself changed, a stranger in places she once romped about without a care, an alien in a world where everything is loud and angry, and she was loud and angry, and sometimes she still is, but other times she’s forgotten how she’s supposed to feel, supposed to react. 

Everything is different. She can never go back to a time when Tyria was her whole horizon. The closest she can get is her memories with Rajya, when she was child. Days moved slowly, and the world was a story, a tapestry of love and suffering that she could read before bed. It was easier that way. 

But even back then, she knew it was a sham. That real life was visceral and painful, and would beat her down at every opportunity. And now is no different--she has new friends, a lover, an airship, and a new place that she calls home, at least by name. And in the midst of all this, the concept that she’s built her heart around, like the vines climbing up the trellis on the page of her sketchbook, is crumbling into shards and splinters. 

She leans forward, letting her forehead rest against the cold, rusty metal of the deck’s railing. She grits her teeth, eyes narrowing, metal hand gripping the pen in a fist so tight that the plastic casing cracks nearly in half. And then the pen is flying off the airship, out over soot-darkened rooftops, and shreds of torn sketchbook paper are hurled after it, though they only sail a foot through the air before they begin to drift downward, spinning and lilting on the breeze like feathers. She bangs her head against the railing, again and again, and even in her anger, she doesn’t feel like shouting. She doesn’t want to be loud. 

What’s the point? she thinks, Why should I keep trying? Why did I return? Why do I still care? 

She takes a long, shuddering breath, wiping hard at her eyes with the back of her hand. It’s a poison. A disease. Tyria is in her blood, and it will always call her back. 

--------------------------------------

Over the snow-capped mountains and across the fields and forests of Kryta, Cara returns to Shaemoor. Her tiny room at the top of the farmer’s mill is just as she left it, if covered in a significant layer of dust. Even her favorite cat is snoozing on the bed, though it does nothing more than open one eye in greeting. She’s not staying the night here. It will take a couple hours to meet up with Jack and the others in the swamp, so it’s best that she gather what she needs, and leave. No fanfare, no sentimentality. It shouldn’t be difficult; this is a place where she despised herself, spent years trapped in a pit of despair and self-loathing. There is nothing of worth here, except her gear, which she came for. 

She rounds up her weapons first. With her greatsword and rifle already strung across her pack, she adds a large hammer, an axe, a sword, a small shield, and a spiked mace to the array. Some of them go in the pack, others are tied with straps to hang from the sides of it. She flips through her stack of unopened letters, which she suspects has grown in the last year, nosy farmers delivering her backlog of family correspondence straight to her desk. Then she takes them all and shoves them under the mattress, out of sight, out of mind. Like they never existed. 

Despite a fine peppering of dust, her armor still gleams, silver surface reflecting halos of gold in the candlelight. She stares down at her hard face, reflected in the chestplate, on the emblem of the Vigil so exquisitely molded into the metal, and she feels ill, as if her stomach is forcing its way up her throat. There’s no time to let petty, irrational weakness distract her--she grits her teeth and, piece by piece, removes her armor from the stand, and goes through the familiar motions of putting it on. Even after five years, the preparations that she has rehearsed since she was a child come naturally, easily, her second skin that she had planned to live the rest of her life in. Fight in battle, die in battle. With strength, honor, and justice. 

It’s heavier than she remembers. She untethers her greatsword from her pack, and experimentally swings it through the air, a simple upper-cut slash. Her breath quickens, her stance wavers, she feels stunted and instantly yearns for her arms to move freely. But is it really the smooth range of motion that she craves, or the panting from her chest that she fears? 

She’s lost muscle mass. It happens. She sits on the edge of the bed, untying the binding on her chestplate, and carefully lowering it to the floor. She didn’t want that, anyway. Baring that lie on her chest. She’s isn’t Vigil, and she never will be again. There’s nothing to be done about the rest of her armor, most of it in uniform, but at least it doesn’t scream from the highest hilltop in the same way the chestplate does: I’m a traitor! I’m a failure! I am disgraced, and I deserve my isolation.

Isolated no more, she has Jack. And the rest of the gang, though she’d hardly call them close companions. Still, in the moments when she is away from her lover, left to what few meaningful thoughts she has, she remembers what it’s like to be completely alone. There’s a part of her that believes she should’ve stayed that way, as penance. And another that’s learned not to care. She is no longer a soldier, no longer honorable. And she’s never lived her life half-heartedly. 

She pulls a storage bin out from under the bed, and unveils a thick norn-style shirt, made from a mix of hides and fur, a gift from Kylan many years ago. It will do in place of her chestplate, unrecognizable to any familiar faces she may encounter at the war front, further enforcing the idea that she is not Cara, not even human. Even in her shame, she isn’t ready to be associated with the charr-killing mongrels she’ll soon be fighting alongside. Especially if the sack-hoods come out.

She stands in the doorway, saddled with armor and weapons on her back. She looks at the cat, who at some point circled the bed and settled down with its tail to Cara, face tucked away out of view. 

“Goodbye,” she says in her flat, commanding tone, startling herself a little. The room had been dead silent, her footsteps dampened by the dust. She waits for the cat to reply--and it doesn’t, so she moves on. 

----------------------------------------------

Dido sits at her desk in her apartment in the Western Commons, busily scrawling away with a pencil. Trisha, take care of Kennedy; Sara, finish the dress for Elizabeth--she scrolls through the mental list of clients in her head, and when the letters are all written and addressed, she puts them on the table by the door, to be dropped in the mail on her way out. No noble lady will be left unattended, futzing and complaints should be minimal. She opens her little pantry, peeking in the back corners of each shelf in search of perishable food, when a tinny, subtle crackling in her ears grabs her attention. 

Abruptly, she straightens up, and goes to the window, leaning her head out just enough to appear as if she’s enjoying the cool evening air. She gently taps her finger on the tiny comm, tucked safely in her ear. “Yes?” she answers crisply, voice even and smooth and pleasantly indifferent, an automaton of grace and sinuous charm. She falls silent, listening to the reply, and tilts her head out just a bit farther, trying to abate poor reception. 

“I know, I know. Look, it’s not a vacation,” she says, keeping soft and low so that she doesn’t disturb her neighbors. “I--yes, I’m going to be with my sister, I never denied that. But we’re also going to an active war zone, so I’ll be working at the same time… Yes, of course I will keep you updated on everything I see. Every last fallen pine needle--who? Right, I’ll keep an eye out for them.”

The tinny voice in her ear drones on, a cloud passes by overhead, revealing the moon, and she dips back inside her apartment, a little more clarity coming through the device. She half-listens as she boxes up her sewing machine, shoving it under the bed and out of view from snooping eyes, and rolls up and folds her patchwork of fabrics spread across the sewing table. 

“I understand,” she says gently, but firmly. “You know I take this seriously. And that I can multitask. Or I wouldn’t have the right to call myself tailor by day, agent by night. Sometimes the reverse. I like being kept on my toes.” 

Goodbyes are exchanged, and the comm crackles and closes the connection. For a moment, she considers removing it from her ear; just a little peace and quiet, without her mentor butting in on her thoughts all night and all day, would be a sweet relief. But she leaves it in, just in case. Duty calls. 

Tomorrow--in the morning, duty calls. She lies down on her bed, swallowed in her plush comforter. She will have plenty of time to catch up with Cara and Jack when the sun sits high in the sky, warm and bright, and a fascinating, unprecedented adventure awaits them. A charr civil war, Jormag looming on horizon. She’s living through history, and her keen eyes are drinking in every minute of it.