[Dorian isn't actually certain why one of the locals has decided he needed a bundle of lanterns to hand out to the wandering masses. He was only walking down to the market for grapes, wine, and cheese. Perhaps he was looking a little melancholy after Magnus' departure or...looked like someone who'd have a happy face, or a warm smile for someone to take a lantern from. As it stands, he frowns down at the bundle of unlit lanterns he's carrying rather than his targeted groceries, and he's not above stopping anyone who passes by to offer them one. The sooner he rids himself of them, the sooner he can have his wine at home. In peace. And think about all the people he's lost. Alone.

That wasn't the point of this holiday, was it?]

Pardon. [Ugh.] In light of the holiday, though it hardly feels it deserves the name. Holiday suggests something jolly doesn't it? [He shakes his head.] Take a lantern, would you?

[Please?]

[Among the chatter regarding how this particular holiday was traditionally celebrated was treating friends to dinner, something Dorian could, most certainly, do. Especially when one such friend made it a point to simply...persist in that damned Barracks of his. The communal nature of the place was such that Dorian was able to stride right in, and he did so Thursday evening, dressed casually (for Dorian), after the scheduled end of Cullen's patrol.]

Commander, would you care to join me for dinner?

a. for a friend he should have seen off | ota

[For all his desire to avoid all the memorial this holiday was seemingly trying to force on everyone, and for all he wanted nothing but to ignore it, after being handed lanterns earlier in the week, he'd kept two, because there was a man who'd been a stalwart companion and ally wars and averting apocalypse had never allowed him to properly send off. He joined the other residents at the riverside, where he didn't anticipate privacy, but there was at least the minor chance his remembrance would be lost in the sea of others being sent off down the river to floating into the sky.

The mage wasn't an artist, and had never been gifted with words keen for the expressing of emotion, but, in his neat script, using a charcoal pencil with a thick tip, he wrote neatly across the side of the lantern the simple sentiment, "You always were the best of us. Vitae benefaria." His smile is slightly sad as he expands the lantern, but hesitates when it comes to actually heading toward the river. Why did this feel so much like letting go?]

b. and for a father he never forgave | closed to Iona

[Letting go of Felix's lantern was even worse than he'd anticipated, but the second lantern he'd brought, devoid of inscription for several moments after staring at its side panel, was meant for someone else. There were so many things roiling in his head, in his chest, so many arguments, so many days spent wondering if today would be the day he would tell Dorian he was proud, the day Dorian would hear that his choices didn't matter, that he was his son, that he loved him-

-but that day had never came. Instead, a token appointment and a brief meeting had sent him back to the South, to his friends to be sure, but also, apparently to safety. Then a letter, a congratulatory letter at that, regretting a death and welcoming him to the seat that death had vacated.]

Why didn't you tell me?

[And it was asked of a lantern. How foolish was this evening? So wrapped up in his own mind was he that he didn't notice the whisper quiet elven maiden approach...]

[Have something you want to thread out? Hit me up on plurk @ vikael or drop me a PM on Dorian's journal.]