Post #2574951 in The City of Chains, a roleplay on RPG

And here they were again.

The skeleton of the ship was still there, though eroded further by the years that had passed since last Amalia had been to this precise spot on the Coast. She supposed she had eroded, too, in some sense. Some would say it had made her weaker, but she thought that in truth, all that had happened was that some of her sharper edges had worn away a little, leaving her smoother but not soft. Stone, not sand. Her fundamental nature had not changed, only the mode of its expression. She had, she thought, always been capable of being everything she was now, and arguably, things both worse and better. But she was not those things, she was this. And she was at peace with that.

She would change still more, she could sense that. But though what lay ahead for her was in many ways clouded and indistinct, foreign to her ways of thinking and even… frightening, in some respects, she had accepted that too. Acceptance was probably her strength, she supposed. She could accept others as they were, even if she did want to push them away from paths that seemed especially perilous to walk. She could accept mistakes and failures. She could accept pain and punishment and change, even. Once, she hadn’t been able to turn that acceptance towards herself, but she thought she might be able to now. It was a weight lifted, to be sure.

She thought that Sparrow might have a bit more difficulty with acceptance than she did, though he would probably argue until he was blue in the face that it was not so. Or… less argue, more insist. As though he fooled anyone but himself that way. As though there were anyone left who hadn’t forgiven him but himself. Curling her toes into the sand, Amalia turned so she was facing him, halfway. Her reddish eye caught his, and the brow over it ascended her forehead.

“I believe you had something to say to me?”

Here they were.

Sparrow busied herself with a piece of driftwood. Skewering the sand and painting lopsided, ugly pictures; depictions of herself with slanted grins, and perhaps, something that resembled a Qunari. The only indications were branch-like horns sprouting from its lumpy head, and the clear size difference between the two figures. She occasionally stopped to peer away from her work and scrutinize the upended ships, merely wooden skeletons decorating the Wounded Coast; husks of what they once were. Was she the same? She supposed she was, in a way. However, she was no longer alone. She did not waste away as she once did, becoming less and less of what once was. An old ship with patched holes, painted anew and sailing again. Only a little more carefully this time.

Her eyes lingered on the remains of the nearest ship and then drifted towards Amalia, who stood only a few paces away. She could not read her expression--that, at least, had not changed from when they were children. The years had transformed them both. In Amalia's case, certainly for the better. She watched her open up in ways she would have never dreamed plausible, and to particular people she would have thought impossible to get along with, given their differences. Not that she believed that she, too, hadn't changed for the better. In more ways than one, she had. Never had she felt as if a place called her name, but things were different now and she'd been given many reasons to stay. Freedom no longer tugged at her legs, willing her to ride the wind as she had; abandoning all that remained behind her. Did anchors now weigh on her ankles, or roots to grow?

Years had not changed her temperament. She still denied her faults, burying them in the sand and convincing herself that the spot would be long lost and forgotten. Her companions, as stubborn as they were, had been the ones to dig them up, dusting them off in order to pin them back where they belonged. They did not push her away when she was selfish, nor did they scowl when she made outrageous mistakes. She did not understand their kindness. Sometimes, she rejected it--as a mistrustful child would, striking out unintentionally. She was Sparrow, after all. A flighty bird prone to moody outbursts; slow to understand, and quick to anger. She screwed up her eyebrows and stabbed the ground with the stick. Forgiveness was a sour word to swill in your mouth, even now.

Murky eyes swung away from Amalia as she turned towards her. In her peripheral vision, she could see that her once-friend did not face her directly. It felt as if they were meeting with their backs turned. Two forces with many tales to tell, many grievances to swallow, and a tongue too twisted to get the words out. She blinked down at the sandy images and scuffed the heel of her boot across them; smudging. Erased.

"Don't I always?" she asked lamely, finally arching her eyebrows. How long had it been since she'd heard Amalia laugh? Ages. Ages and ages ago. It felt far away, now. She bit at the inside of her lip and shifted her weight from foot to foot. "We haven't had a proper talk about everything. I mean, it doesn't feel... resolved. I wanted--I mean, I want, I say that a lot." She laughed curtly, shaking her head. "What do you want? What do you see? For us. I've never asked."

What did she see for them? Amalia knew what was meant by the question, she simply did not understand why it was being asked. Then again, perhaps she did. Sparrow always seemed to want reassurance, someone to reinforce the ideas he already had formed—that he deserved to be forgiven, accepted, and brought in close. Or perhaps it was not something he thought he deserved, but something he wanted anyway. Whatever the case, she had long since let the hurt of his abandonment go. Forgiveness was a relatively simple thing for Amalia, as it was for most Qunari, though perhaps not many people in this city would know that, given what they had seen. Once a wrong was rectified, as best it could be, it was forgotten. Grudges were poor substitutes for the people they kept you from. Even the Qun understood that.

She did accept him, too. She always had. But neither of those things meant they had to be… friends, whatever that meant for her now. In childhood, she knew, they were encouraged to spend time with one another, probably so that the centered, calm Amalia could level out the unsteady, coltish Sparrow. Convince him not to fly, so they wouldn’t have to clip his feathers. That had obviously been a miscalculation. Or maybe they’d known, and only used him to teach her a lesson. They wasted nothing, after all, not even the temporary.

Amalia sighed. Somehow, it was always incumbent upon her to decide, with him. For all of his fluttering and squawking, he rarely seemed to get anywhere or achieve anything. “I don’t understand what you want me to say,” she pointed out. She visited him in his house on occasion; all told, they ran into each other maybe once or twice a week. Even that was a matter of some effort on her part—they did not otherwise occupy the same circles in Kirkwall. The interests they had independently of one another didn’t often intersect, and so unlike Nostariel or Aurora or even Lucien, she didn’t naturally run into him during the course of her normal activities, and he’d made no effort to make a space to include her in the rest of his life, not that she’d have necessarily accepted the offer to occupy it. She was not one for flitting around, socializing and occupying herself with whatever whimsical thing caught her attention next. She saw nothing in particular wrong with him being like this, but it would never be who she was.

And just the same, she did not expect him to occupy the spaces in her life that were open to him—he likely had little use for her instruction, he was not frequent in the Alienage, and he did not come to visit her on any but the rarest occasion. All fine, all perfectly acceptable to her, but none of it conducive to any relationship other than the one they already had. “Would it satisfy you, if I said we were friends? If I told you that you mattered?” He had never ceased to matter, but perhaps she had not been especially clear on this point. She’d thought he still spoke the language of implication, but she had learned that sometimes, unspoken understanding was insufficient. That things had to be said. And some people just needed things spelled out for them, even the not-so-crucial things. As for friends, well… not close ones, but as she had learned to use the word, Sparrow qualified. “What if I just see that?” She was frustrated, but kept her tone as even and calm as it always was.

How many times would they tread this ground before he was satisfied?

What she felt was a mess of confusion, fatigued from her desperate attempts to conjure up or preserve their youthhood. She was trying to resurrect a relationship that remained in the past, even when she did not understand the reasons herself. While others grew around her and became better, more stable people, Sparrow clung to old feelings, old relationships like barnacles beneath wet stones, heedless of the waves smashing across them. What did she need? What did she want? She wasn't so sure herself, which only made things worse. Her behaviour, she supposed, was the furthest thing from being Qunari as far as she could tell—forgiveness was as unpleasant as treating a wound with salt and acceptance, especially of oneself, was like pressing scalding stones to her skin. The branch-jabbing softened into smooth lines drawn into the sand as she searched herself, sought out reasons she could not let go and move on. The effort was fruitless.

Being a creature of needs and desires, hardly practising patience and discipline and restraint as she should have been, meant that she was usually unsatisfied. The Qun, the Dalish, City Elves; none of them held a place for her and so, she could never make comparisons. She was Sparrow, and even being that made things difficult for her. She was in-between most things, treading grounds that did not call her name. Sometimes, she desired the simplicity Amalia and she shared as youths. Sometimes, she just wanted their relationship to return to her imagined state; sharing everything from dreams, nightmares, goals, foolish things. Acceptance, forgiveness. Those were concepts that flew over her head. They might have been two sides of the same coin she'd been seeking for so long, but her awareness was a sad, stunted creature, scrambling after scraps of approval. Pats on the head; nods, any small measure of comfort to sweep back her ego.

That is how it had always been. So it shall be. It was in the name she left behind in the valley, where and when she'd abandoned Amalia and the others. It felt as if it had been eons ago, and still, Sparrow chased after those moments as if she could turn back time. As if she could prevent herself from walking away as she had, but maintain everything she'd gained in the process. If she stood at any sort of crossroads, she would have been the hopeless wanderer, cross-legged, beneath the sign post. Too stubborn to move forward and still looking over her now-slender shoulders. She licked her dry lips, and stared hard at her sand-markings, willing them to answer her questions. Calm the stirrings in her mind, quell the unease that inhabited her thoughts. Had it been any of her other friends, in her position, they would have simply accepted their pasts and moved on. They would stop beating the dead horse, as it were.

I don't understand what I want you to say, either. It was an unending battle that pulled her in all directions at once, though she was never satisfied with the results, and always fearing that she was missing something. That her discomfort could be rectified if she only tried again, if she only rephrased it; if only she raised her voice higher and made her intentions known, even if they made no sense. She swung the branch like a blade, and imagined it were so. Sharp, whetted. Cutting through the jumble of words tangled in her throat. Her tongue was brambles; her words were thorns, coming out all wrong. They were friends, weren't they? They both lived in Kirkwall. They shared the same friends. She could see her anytime she wanted, if she so wished to seek her out. Shame kept her in the shadows, wishing to be there, but not quite making it to her door. Hell, it seemed as if she spoke to Ithilian far more. She jabbed at the air again and crushed her teeth together, bunching the muscles in her jaw.

She wanted to know her, as she was now. “Yes,” it came out as a hiss, surprising even herself, until she bit out a laugh that loosened the tension in her face. She wanted to know that she mattered to her, she supposed. Had there been any more space to occupy in her life, and if it still existed after having vacated it so long ago, Sparrow wanted the chance to make up for it. She wanted to make amends; not just forgiveness, but another chance. She blinked up at the sky and lowered the branches tip to study the clouds, intent on the horizon. “Long ago, you were the only one I called a friend. There were no others. And I... Nothing I say can excuse what I did,” she shook her head, and glanced at her, “but that's not why I called you here.” She exhaled sharply and abruptly crouched crouched on her heels, dropped back on her rump, and wrapped her arms childishly around her legs. Her ears grew hotter. Saying things plainly made her feel physically ill. “I want another chance. As your friend. Nothing else feels right—but if you don't, if this is all you see, there's nothing I can say to sway you anyhow. I know that much.”

“So take it.” Amalia looked somewhat incredulously down at Sparrow, crossing her arms over her chest and letting out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sigh. “You are waiting for me to extend something that I have been attempting to put into your hands for a while now.” She wasn’t sure how he had missed it, honestly. It wasn’t like she went around visiting people she did not care for, or making armor for those she did not want to help. Amalia had never been one to use other people’s words to describe how she felt about something—she had always been a person who preferred to show herself through her actions. “I cannot close your fingers for you.”

Shaking her head slightly, she dropped down to a crouch, putting her more on an eye level with her friend. “You know how to ask, to insist, even to demand. Now it is time to learn to accept. Yourself not least of all. Only when you are able to come to terms with yourself will you be able to come to terms with me, with this.” He was friends with others, of course. But his history with those others was not so fraught as it was with her, and so the obstacle was only hampering him here.

There was a period of silence, and in it, she studied him, pursing her lips slightly. “Sparrow… are you still aqun-athlok? You lived as a male, when last we knew each other well. Would you still have me call you as one?” It might seem a change in topic, but for Amalia, at least, the matters were connected. There were those Qunari who were born as one sex and lived as another, and this was accepted. For all intents and purposes, the Sparrow she had known in her childhood was a boy. But he had never been quite like the other aqun-athlok. He’d seemed less comfortable than they were, with what he was. As though he were not sure of the role. Now, Amalia thought he looked much more feminine than he ever had as a child, and she wondered if his mind on the matter was still the same. This, whatever the verdict, as something he had to accept about himself, as well.

Just take it? Simple as that. No catches, and no begging on her knees. Not that Amalia was the sort to demand either—but for so long she'd learned to expect things from others. Nothing was free. Even friendship had a fee. Rough times, and rougher acquaintances, had taught her that much. Everything came with a price, and if you expected anything different, then you were a fool and deserved what you got. So she thought, until the day she stumbled into Kirkwall where her world, along with all of her give-and-take ideals, was flipped on its head. She finally looked at her, jaw slack, even as the minute signals of impatience flickered across Amalia's face. She probably reflected stupid-surprise, but she couldn't help it. She hadn't expected this. There was space there, then. A breath of relief escaped her; one she wasn't aware she'd been holding. Her hands trembled, as if she wasn't sure what to do with them now that they were empty. Had she missed so many signs?

The tension in her shoulders loosened when Amalia stooped down to her level. She did not look away, even when the words she spoke turned her stomach in weak flops. Probably because she was right and it was difficult to hear. Words could be used as weapons, as well as bandages and salves. For so long she'd used her own as biting whips, or furious waves of passion that were made to reduce things to ash and dust. To damage and destroy; hardly to understand anything or make known what she truly meant. She was fickle, but honest. At one time, they operated on metaphors, actions, and silent nods of approval, but that had been long ago. No longer did she understand what others meant, unless they made their intentions known, because her thoughts swam with what she assumed to be true. Accept herself? It made her want to laugh, but she could not. The problem, it seemed, lied with her.

Aqun-athlok. She blinked and tipped her head against her knee, chin propped. The question caught her off guard. Sure, she'd been referred to that before, particularly when the other Qunari found her tattered and naked in the woods, but she'd never given it any thought. To her it had been a simple change, as if she wore new pants. A new identity that suited her purposes. She had shed her old skin to begin anew, even if it meant she'd never truly left her other self behind. Sparrow was a boisterous man, full of bluster and fickle as the wind. She was also wonder-eyed, and adventurous, but she'd also been kind and naive, far too friendly for her own good. A weaker person, she supposed. It surprised her even more when she mouthed, “no.” If she ever struggled with her identity, she had long pushed it to the side. Kicked it under the rug so that she could no longer see it.

What would she call her, then? It seemed strange that there should be any shift at all, as if the change would affect who they were in the past. Who she was, and who she would be from now on. Stranger still that all of her friends had been aware, and already acknowledged, her true gender for years now—it never bothered her, even if she still wasn't the most feminine of the bunch. Having any possibility of weakness, of returning to that broken thing in the woods, frightened her more than she could admit. But she was stronger now for having changed. She had companions who would watch her back. It made no difference now. Her eyebrows drew together. “Suppose not. Still Sparrow, though.”

A new beginning. She held out her hand and stuck out her pinky finger.

Snippet #2574951

located in Kirkwall, a part of The City of Chains, one of the many universes on RPG.

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