Zoralin Brosca (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wardenbrosca) wrote2018-02-06 09:55 pm
wardenbrosca) wrote2018-02-06 09:55 pm
Open post!
Open to pretty much anything! I can noodle around with AUs, too. I love me some AUdling.
Open to pretty much anything! I can noodle around with AUs, too. I love me some AUdling.
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"It's not just that- they named me a Paragon. It's like... it's kind of like being named a... a god, or-" She cast around for that word she'd learned from someone much better at explaining things than her. "Or a demi-god. Or a saint or something."
It struck her not for the first time how difficult it is to explain Orzammar to surfacers. Possibly because Orzammar is kind of stupid. Whatever. "Listen, remember how I told you about my sister? The one who's screwing the king? If she has sons, they'll have his caste- nobles! If she has daughters, they'd be casteless," she explains, bouncing on the balls of her feet with excitement. "But not anymore! I'm a Paragon, which means I'm the founder of a whole new noble house! So my sister doesn't have to worry about having a daughter that she has to throw out like yesterday's turds. They could even get married- my sister'll be QUEEN!"
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"You've clearly thought this out. So, what're you going to name this noble house of yours? 'The Grand House of We Earned It And Are Better Than You?' Maybe something to do with nugs?"
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"Nah, House Brosca'll be fine. We weren't House anything before," she explained. "For dusters, last names are basically decoration. People care more about dog pedigrees. Now we'll House Brosca, and all those fuckers'll have to treat us right. The guards that beat us and the fuckin' warriors that thought we'd lower the army by joining- ha!"
Zoralin has ranted before about the stupidity of the caste system, and praised the new king, Bhelen, for finally letting casteless serve in the army. It was no surprise. Probably the cruelest thing she's ever revealed is the tendency for upper-caste women to abandon casteless babies in the Deep Roads, or the idea that their very existence weakens the Stone. That they make the world worse simply by being born.
Just then, she reveled in the knowledge that they'd get to strut around the Diamond Quarter like goddamn deshyrs, rubbing everyone's faces in it.
"Imagine if a mage got named Divine. It's like that."
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"In that case, I can't wait to help you rub everyone's faces in how amazing you are and how wrong they've been. It'll be an absolute pleasure."
For how 'different' dwarves and humans considered each other, they really really weren't. They handled a lot of things the same: their poor, their nobility and their dirty little secrets of society they wanted to pretend didn't exist.
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Zora beamed at his finally sharing in her delight. Great shitting ancestors, it felt good to have a friend- a real friend. In many ways, Anders reminded her of Leske: the humor, the chip on his shoulder, the willingness to lie right to someone's face if it got him out of trouble, that tendency to drag her ass-first out of saying the wrong thing and getting herself stabbed.
In several, vitally important ways, he couldn't have been more different. Anders had more integrity than Leske. He had hope and determination in ways that Leske hadn't. Leske had accepted his place in the world and molded himself to it, becoming a ruthless, hopeless creature of Dusttown. Anders has never let himself become a creature of the Circle. For that, she trusted him more than she had ever trusted Leske.
All the same it felt good, having a friend again. A good friend. Maybe someday a best friend, if conversations like this kept going well.
Conversations like this - where they shared each other's excitement, and showed their vulnerable undersides. Like the weakness she bared when she let her excitement dim a little and kept talking.
"There's something else. Um... you're a healer." Duh. "Can you... heal anything? No matter how old it is?"
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Zora understood all of that, but had the hope Anders needed to be able to continue thriving. It was a good feeling. He might not be comfortable airing much of anything out with her, but he was comfortable having her at his side and in his life, more than just about anyone after everything she'd done for him.
The dip in her tone broke him from his thoughts and he raised a brow as he looked back over to her.
"I suppose...with enough time and mana, nearly anything can be put right. You don't have some massive scar in an unfortunate place, do you? Deep scars are about the only thing I can't do."
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But beneath them all, in different ink, was something different. Its crudity contrasted with the sharp, clean lines of her tattoos. Its faded, almost blurry quality stood out among everything else on her face. Though the ink was a bit faded, the mark had a ragged quality to it, as though someone had tattooed (in a crude, old-fashioned way far beneath normal dwarven technology) over a scar or a burn. It wasn't deep, but it was old.
Her brand. Every casteless had one: a burn with a primitive tattoo over it, that they might never forget what they are. A burn in case the ink faded, a tattoo in case the burn healed.
She traced it with her finger, that mark of worthlessness, the stamp of nothingness she'd bore since infancy. "I'm supposed to go back as a noble," came an unusually subdued voice. "They're supposed to start treating me like a real person, who exists."
Zora has told Anders about the Memories. How the Shaper said to her face that her idea of having been to Orzammar before was a delusion, since she wasn't in the Memories. That she didn't exist in Orzammar before.