( open ) I can hear the sound of a heartbeat before it goes out

[politicians]

WHO: Elrond + Anyone, open and closed starters
WHAT: Elrond doing his best to cope + Activities around Thorne and the Horizon
WHERE: Thorne + The Horizon
WHEN: April.
WARNINGS: N/A for now

( prompts will be listed in the comments! )

Comments

[politicians]

[ ah. elrond turns to greet jon with a smile. it seems his smile has yet to falter, yet it seems a bit more strained of late. ]

As a beginning. We could all use one.

[northerndragon]

Aye.

[But he seems a bit skeptical. Skeptical is a strange place to find himself in a conversation with Elrond, who has seemed, to this point, to be sure and wise.]

Better a beginning than an end, I suppose. This is new enough to me -- no one ever thought I would make a maester.

[Conscientious when he sets himself to learning something, but more a soldier than a man of letters nonetheless.]

[politicians]

[ even the wisest cannot predict it all. elrond's foresight has taken him far, but he is still young in the reckoning of the elves. he got a brief glimpse of what it was like for galadriel, beyond the curtain. ]

Why ever not? You seem keen enough.

[northerndragon]

[That makes him chuckle, but it is small and sober.]

I was more for the training yard. I did as well as I could at lessons, but I have never been a man for a library. I don't know when they start with your people, but if you are the son of a lord anywhere in Westeros, they put a wooden sword in your hand when you make your first steps.

Yet a maester may be of more value than a soldier, in some battles. I only know a little, but whatever I know may help in the end. Here, or there.

[politicians]

[ ah. perspective. he wonders if it is the same for men. their world is not an easy one, but elrond never pictured it to be so hard. the war was over, after all.

. . . no. the war was merely . . . postponed. evil does not sleep. ]

Among my people, all skills have value. Be it the tending of gardens or the deftness of the quill. We are allowed to choose our own calling.

Save, of course, during times of war.

[northerndragon]

[Jon gives a helpless little shrug. He had been born in a war -- born of the war, even. He had been a child when his father had gone away to fight Balon Greyjoy, and barely a man when the War of the Five Kings had broken out. Eddard Stark had kept the peace in the North, to be sure, but he had never assumed his sons would not need to know how to fight.

Yet if Jon had shown inclination to be a maester, he might have been allowed to study to become one. That set Ned Stark apart from men like Randyll Tarly, who would not suffer their sons to be anything other than warriors.]

How long have you been at peace?

[politicians]

Not as long as we were at war.

[ the first age had been mired in it. a golden halcyon peace so quickly blotted out, quite literally, by the powers of darkness. it was only hard won of late . . . and even then, elrond knows, trouble looms close. the new found destruction of the southlands along with . . . their new leader will change the nature of that peace quite quickly. ]

But if we let our wars take away what we are fighting for . . . then we are already lost.

[northerndragon]

[He nods -- a very small nod, but there is conviction in it.]

If you do not fight to give people a chance at life, where's the point in it? I thought to fight for glory as a boy, but I was wrong. There is nothing glorious in killing.

This execution they're planning... what do you think of it?

[politicians]

[ his expression tightens briefly, a strange look on a man who has always kept himself gentle and calm. ]

I do not see the point. It is merely punishment, not justice. The dead do not give absolution.

[northerndragon]

[He listens, frowning slightly. The situation is thorny.]

What is justice, then? In this situation?

I know why I voted to spare the acolytes. Why others did, I can't be sure.

[politicians]

Justice would be to make reparations. Or to allow for change.

[ he sighs. it is thorny. there are people he wouldn't offer such a chance to, but the idea of simply killing them in a public execution. it's vile. ]

I do not think killing someone without weapon in hand to the spectacle of all offers anything.

[northerndragon]

[He nods slowly, still frowning.]

I saw my first man beheaded when I was... can't say. A boy of six or seven years. It was the ancient custom of my father's people for the King in the North to do his own justice, then, when they were no longer kings, the Lords of Winterfell.

He thought that if you would condemn a man to death, you should do the killing yourself, and before you did it, you should look the man in the face and hear his words.

When they took his head, it wasn't like that, I'm told. My sister doesn't like to speak of it, but -- [A helpless shrug. Who would?]

[politicians]

I have fought in a war. I understand the necessities of this.

But to commit to this, after the bloodshed . . . I do not believe it serves any purpose other than to prove one's power over another.

And that is no way to establish peace.