ph_logs | But in my life I never meant to cause no harm

But in my life I never meant to cause no harm

Who: Claude (

inaurate) & You!
What: Claude's hosting ~~his own birthday party~~ a multi-cultural feast and everyone's invited! If you would like your character to contribute a recipe, please see the top-level within to do that!
When: The evening of July 24th (forward-dated) but this will also cover prep.
Where: The Festival Green (basically dead center of the island/town, you can't miss it!)
Warning(s): Will update if any apply.

There is a notice about the event posted to the community bulletin board in early July. Below it is a small wooden box with an open slot in the top.

Those who Claude knows personally will also receive an individual invitation with the same information.

On the evening of the 24th this month, there will be a feast held in the Festival Green, and all are welcome to attend! I invite everyone to submit a recipe from their home, and I will do my best to recreate them here. If it will require off-world ingredients, please get it in sooner so I can make arrangements with everyone's favorite skeleton pirate merchant. (Donations of citrus fruit for payment to our dear captain are appreciated but not necessary.)

Along with plenty of food and drink, the musical stylings of Cormac and the Banshees will be featured, and there will be bonfire jumping after nightfall.

You are also welcome to bring your own dish if you so wish!

Looking forward to spending an evening feasting with you all!
~ Claude von Riegan

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Dedue - who is normally tall, stiff, and awkward in the majority of social situations - is much more engaged this evening. For anyone who made or submitted a meal, Dedue will approach them and ask questions about how they prepared it, how it’s meant to be eaten, what cultural significance does it have, etc. He’ll also volunteer information about his own meals.

During Claude’s speech, Dedue looks oddly teary-eyed, and he covers his mouth with his hand. He excuses himself from the table for a moment and takes some time to calm down next to whatever building is the most unobtrusive.

Claude doesn't notice at first that one of the guests he'd most wanted the presence of-- who wouldn't be excited for the opportunity to eat Dedue's food?-- has ducked away. He'd seen him around earlier, looking a lot more comfortable than Claude is used to seeing him, frankly. And doesn't that make him feel all warm and fuzzy, that he facilitated that?

Having made his speech, he's gotten himself a plateful of good eats, including the salmon curry, when he spots the familiar figure stood away from the feast. Well, time to be a good host and figure out what's up!

"Mind if I join you over here?" Too bad if you do, he's already leaning back against the building and carefully balancing his plate of food on his knees.

Dedue is honestly a little surprised Claude both a) noticed and b) cared enough to check on him. They’ve conversed somewhat since he’s been here, but they’d never been particularly close beforehand. And in general he doesn’t expect much from people he doesn’t know very well.

“You may,” he says, looking a little confused. “I was planning on returning shortly,” he adds, in case Claude is upset that he ditched the party.

Yeah well don't go telling anyone he's actually a big softie that cares about people. That's embarrassing. "Oh good, I'd hate for you to miss out on the food! Especially after how much you helped with it." He sure doesn't seem upset that Dedue has stepped away. "Did you just need a break from the crowd? It'll die down a bit once more people have filled their plates and sat down." He's not unaware of the needs of introverts! He's even prone to slipping away for a quiet moment himself, though usually it's later into the evening.

“It is not that,” Dedue says with a shake of his head, although difficulty with crowds is usually an accurate assessment.

He rubs his thumbs together, thinking of how best to summarize his feelings into speech.

“I was inspired by your words. The intent of this event. It is something I believe in strongly. Back in the monastery, I was hesitant to express anything of my culture. As, in Fodlan, anything of Duscur is a sign of treason. A treasonous people could only come from a treasonous culture.”

He says, “There were many ways in which I was isolated, and I tried to maintain that isolation, both to protect myself and others. It was the encouragement of a few close peers that convinced me - the way to best preserve Duscur for future generations is by making and sharing its food and customs. If I stop, then Duscur will truly die, only to be remembered as something vile.”

He glances at Claude for a second, then returns his gaze back to his own hands. “I was not aware that you felt similarly on the importance of food. But we had no reason to speak back then. Your speech made me wonder-” (How can he ask the true question - the one that has been on his mind since he first saw Claude - without asking it?) “what I may have missed by being so closed off back then? If there were shared beliefs, shared experiences, what might have happened if more of us had spoken sooner? Could we have had a feast like this back then?”

He then adds, quietly, “You need not respond. I am merely speaking aloud.”

It’s an escape, if Claude wants to take it. So Claude knows that Dedue knows that Claude doesn’t need to say anything about himself here, not if he doesn’t want to.

The skill of listening is one Claude has honed almost as much as his skill at speaking over his lifetime, and all the more so while sitting at the Alliance's Round Table. He stays quiet while Dedue gathers and then shares his thoughts, and gods does he empathize with a lot of it. He'll never be able to understand what the few scattered survivors from Duscur are going through, of course, but the isolation, all the pain that comes with being an outsider... that he fully understands. Giving up his Almyran identity in order to be accepted in Fodlan wasn't something he wanted to do, but he had to-- a Crest would only do so much if it had ever been provable that he was born and raised in Almyra... and if they'd found out the full truth of his identity? The other Lords would sooner burn Derdriu to the ground than let him near her seat of rule.

"Thanks for telling me that." Claude says first, a warm smile at his lips. It truly does mean a lot, particularly from someone as taciturn as Dedue. The offered escape, to not share in turn, actually makes him feel much more inclined to do so. The good food and music probably helps, too, as well as-- well, he's been given other reasons to try and let people in a little more here. "I haven't made a secret of how much I love food and feasts... but they really are an amazing tool in fostering understanding and fellowship. I would have loved to have a feast like this back at the Officer's Academy, with food from all over... not just Fodlan, but Duscur, Brigid, Almyra, Dagda... even something as small as a delicious dish can get people to open their eyes at least a little, start to rethink what they thought they knew."

He pauses for a bite of kebab, the familiar spices of his birth home dancing on his tongue. It's a good excuse to think, to assess how much he wants to share here. He thinks back to the House of Cards with Lorenz-- he really should be telling him this first, but the prospect is daunting and... well, it couldn't hurt to get in some practice with someone who would immediately understand why the news is a big deal and why Claude would have kept such a thing a secret from even his closest companions for so long.

"I was pretty isolated too, though I'm sure it looked different from how you were, at least at the Academy. I was an unknown factor to everyone there, and that made me suspicious. There were also secrets I had to keep, and not just for the sake of my own goals. It was part of a promise I made... before I came to Fodlan." And the seal is broken. He glances at Dedue for a reaction.

“It would have made a difference,” Dedue agrees, imagining the feast that could have been. “For those who were born outside Fodlan, our cultures would be more than just insults or whispered rumors. There would be new memories attached to them. Further, those of us who are foreign could learn of each other directly, not through Fodlan resources. The cookbooks and history texts within the libraries of Fhirdiad Castle and Garrag Mach held many inaccuracies about Duscur. I believe it is true about other lands as well.”

He listens to Claude speak. It is surprising to hear Claude describe himself as isolated. Any time Dedue had seen him, he was surrounded by friends and making jokes. But then again, there was never anything of substance to such conversations. Dedue could see now that Claude must have been holding back a lot of himself.

And then Claude lets the unspoken into the air. Dedue decides to handle it gently, to not make a big deal out of it. Instead, he nods and asks, “What was the promise you made before?”

"Oh, it's definitely true. For a people who take such pride in their isolationism, some of them sure do think they know a lot about lands they've never been to." Claude chuckles and shakes his head, a rare hint of his bitterness about Fodlan's beliefs coming through.

Dedue's tactfulness appears to be the right move given the way Claude relaxes a little more against the wall he's sitting against. "To not tell anyone where I'd come from, of course. My mother-- she didn't want her old life coming and bothering her, if anyone found out where she'd run off to. Or at least, that's what she told me so I'd swear to it. Probably not untrue, but looking back, I doubt it was her only reason to get me to make that promise." He tears up a bit of flat bread, unable to keep his hands still as he speaks. "Almyra doesn't look kindly on people from Fodlan either... and I was a pretty naive kid. I thought things might be different for me over there, but I quickly learned that in being from both lands, neither would accept me. Not unless something changed."

“The kebab you prepared,” Dedue says, gesturing at it. “I have seen that recipe in the cookbooks of the Garreg Mach kitchen. However, it lacked any mention of seasonings to use. I tried to substitute my own when making it once.” He shakes his head. “It did not come out anything like this.”

He adds, “Moreover, that same book had mention of something called Duscur Bear. This is how the Fodlan language refers to a ceremonial dish in Duscur. However, the translation of the term we use would more properly refer to how it is prepared rather than just the animal itself. We use this technique with other animals, but the bear is used to imbue maternal courage and strength. It is not commonly prepared, as - of course - it is hard to catch.”

He listens intently to Claude’s story. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Claude talk about his family before.

Having to keep a secret like that... Dedue has some sympathy but he also can’t fully understand. The idea of having the ability to hide one’s ethnicity in the first place still feels like a luxury to him. He’s trying to put himself in Claude’s shoes, but there’s a mental block that won’t let him get there.

The last part of Claude’s statement does resonate with him more. “Duscur’s relations with Fodlan, prior to the Tragedy, were hopeful. It was a time of increased trade and diplomacy. There were many Faerghans who lived in the capital or who traveled there. My parents had respect for King Lambert. They taught my sister and I some of the Fodlan language so that we could assist at our father’s shop. After Lambert’s death, my father assured us that whoever was responsible would be promptly apprehended and all would be well.”

His face turns harsh. “However. That is not what happened.”

Dedue shakes his head to snap himself out of his thoughts. “Since then, among survivors, opinion of Faerghus is the lowest it has been in several centuries. And those who cooperate with Faerghan authorities are seen as traitors. Yet in Faerghus all from Duscur are traitors, as our people are stained with the sin of regicide. Therefore, as with you, both worlds will not accept me.”

Claude listens just as intently to Dedue talking about Duscur; the food and the Tragedy. He would not be offended to hear that it's a privilege he was able to hide his ethnicity at all; he knows it is, and that it changed the way people treated him in Fodlan for the better, even if he couldn't hide it enough to deflect all suspicion. Even if he wished it hadn't been necessary.

"I'd heard what had happened at Duscur-- or, the church's version anyway. Something about it always seemed off to me, but... I had other things preoccupying me. Now I wish I'd found the time to look into it more..." It had just been one of many suspicious things about the Church of Seiros, one of many troubles the nations of Fodlan had with their neighbors... now, he can't help but wonder if Those Who Slither in the Dark had anything to do with it. "It's hard, being in between like that... you have to carry twice the burden that others place on you. I can't change that about myself-- but I can change the way people think about me, the way they think about Almyra, or Fodlan... and in doing that, I can shake off that burden. And one day, it won't be there at all. It's not easy... but it's working. Gradually."

And now that he's been made more aware of the unique problems Duscur faces, he can try and lend a helping hand to them on his return-- once he's claimed the Almyran throne. By then he'll have plenty of resources to hand, and hopefully things on the Fodlan side of the border will be settled enough that he can write to his friends there to ask for their support as well.

"If you ever want to talk about Duscur, the good or the bad... I'd love to hear more about it."

“Thank you,” Dedue says. “As I with Almyra,” he adds, and he means it.

Dedue thinks for a moment, then says, “I should not ask this of you. If it is not for me to know, then I will accept it. But, what became of Duscur, in your time?”

"Ah, well... things are in flux all over Fodlan at the moment-- or, you know, the moment I last left it in. But that makes it the perfect time for some changes. Some people may want to try and recreate what existed before the war, but as things stand, that's just not possible. And if the change is inevitable, we should try and shape it in a way that builds something better, right?" Claude smiles, and there's not a hint of artifice to it. Just hope, and some weariness. "That's the way I see it, anyway. And I know of at least a few people willing to put in the work to see the people of Duscur returned to their rightful lands, and reparations made. Nothing's been settled yet, but plans are in motion." And yet more will be put into motion once he's able to return.

Tears well into Dedue’s eyes. He exhales a breath, wipes the tears with his knuckles, and sighs, “Thank you. You do not know how much this means to me.”

His voice is a bit shaky.

“I had told myself that it was my duty to protect Dimitri’s path to the throne. That this would be the only way for there to be a ruler in Fodlan who cared about reparations for Duscur. Knowing that you also believed in that dream means, even if I do not know Dimitri’s fate, all hope for the future is not lost.”

Oh, tears! He wasn't expecting to draw those. And he doesn't feel right taking so much credit, when the man who both inspired the action and was going to make sure it would be done was sitting right beside him. "So long as you keep fighting for it, keep trying to find a way, that hope will never be lost. I won't lie to you-- although my plans were always to extend a hand beyond Fodlan and Almyra, it was something I intended to do after I'd secured peace between them. That's a tall enough task, and it's one I haven't finished. But I met you again, during the war, and you brought my attention to the people of Duscur and what they needed, and how urgent that need was. If it weren't for that, I would have missed the opportunity. So, thanks for cluing me in on what I was missing." He reaches a hand out to Dedue's shoulder, squeezing it.

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