faderift | stuck the landing

A few of those who listening to Yngvi's ill-fated attempts to reach Lady Gwenaëlle Vauquelin might have heard talk of nugs. Many nugs. The truth of that becomes readily apparent when Yngvi Congealedinagutterson makes his grand entrance to Skyhold (well it's more a return but he sort of trailed up after Asher last time) about a week after the message.

There are many nugs. More nugs than one dwarf has any right to. Is he trying to usurp Leliana's title as owner of the most nugs in Skyhold? Is he ushering some new sport? Possibly the latter since the team of nugs (regular pink squeaking nugs thanks very much) are lashed together. Hauling a chariot.

Okay it's a keg.

In that keg is Yngvi.

(He's a very small dwarf, it's what happens when you grow up in Darktown and don't see the sun until you're comfortably in the double digits, or that's one story he might sell you for a bargain.)

Up the mountain they come, over the bridge, out into the courtyard seeking mainly Gwenaëlle or Lex, possibly trying to reach just them on the sending crystal this time - still with a black eye - as he steps out, beaming, grand, look at the stylish elan--

Only to land flat on his face. Incredible.

Edited 2016-09-17 17:34 (UTC)

Well, Bethany had been exceedingly impressed -- until the man fell on his face. Her eyes widened and she ran towards him, her expression filled with concern. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

She moved to offer her hand, to help him up, and to check his wounds just in case she needed to do some quick healing. Even though there was already some bruising already.

"Madam, ma'am," the words are muffled because 1. he's faceplanted in the snowy ground and 2. there's a whole cacophany of nug squeaking he needs to speak over but he continues, "part of the plan. Absolutely. Part of. The plan."

Okay he's going to right himself. Give himself as much of a dusting as he can manage as he looks up. And up a bit more before he totters back then leans super casually (again, totally planned) against the keg with an impressive shiner taking up pretty much half of his face. "I'm grand, all in a day's work."

"Oh ... Oh Maker." Bethany stated with concern, as the dwarf finally managed to get himself upright and with ... some muck on him. She gave him a relieved smile as he leaned against the keg. A smile that fades a little with the bruise on his face.

"Well, I don't think that eye is anyone's plan, serah. Uhm, are you all right with a little magic? I could, er, at least take some of the swelling down." She gave a bright smile.

"Are you questioning Comte Vauquelin's wisdom?" All. Part of. The plan. Also even if it wasn't Yngvi's plan, he feels obliged in some sort of way to stick up for Gwenaelle's dad in the face of random strangers because only Gwenaelle and the Boneflayers get to talk shit in any sort of fashion.

But back to the moneymaker. Aka his face. Still handsome beneath the bruise, that's just making it interesting for a bit as he considers the offer, leaning over to calm the nugs. "Nug Wellington, Stroganugg, back in formation." Yes they're named after food, this is how you make sure they respect your authority. "Magic? For this? I've got a better plan. We go to the kitchens, slap a steak on there, job's a good 'un."

"Oh, I don't think so ... I don't know this Comte Vauquelin, so I cannot really judge his wisdom based on not ...meeting him. However, it was a brilliant entrance!" Outside of the falling part. That did not look good.

She grinned at the nugs - now those were brilliant names - before her smile widened. "Well there we go. We're going to the kitchen, to get a steak on your eye."

Edited 2016-09-21 00:12 (UTC)

"I'm Kirkwall, born and bred, like my entrance would be anything other than brilliant." Some people, honestly, like someone from anywhere else could think up something like that, then actually pull it off. Still, small as he is? It's a squeeze with all his worldly goods bound for Skyhold squashed in there with him since setting out.

Holding up a hand, he bends back into the keg to do a bit of rummaging in his pack; can't have the nugs wandering off, can he? It's short work to peg the reins down with long spikes for now but nugs have short legs, they don't need much room to toddle about now do they. "Smart girl," who knows how old she is but women generally like being flattered and that usually means undercutting their age a bit, "Congealedinagutterson. Yngvi Congealedinagutterson. I know the way." Because he can do suave, he was the charming Boneflayer.

(RIP in peace honey badger supreme.)

"Ah, a Kirkwall man ... yes, that does sound rather fitting. Varric would do things the same way." She dimples then. "I spent several years in Kirkwall myself - so I know all about the importance of the brilliant entrance."

She dimpled once more, before she gave him a little dip of her skirts, "My thanks, kind serah. Please, after you." She folded her hands in front of her, her brown eyes flashing faint amusement.

Yngvi's nose wrinkles because everyone in the Carta knows of Varric, but the less said the better in his opinion when there isn't Gunnar around because well, Carta is as Carta does, outsiders don't get that. "You don't sound Kirkwall though. When were you in Kirkwall."

In face, she sounds a bit doglord-ish. Poor Kirkwall, what did it ever do to deserve being filled with doglords on one end and Orlesians at the other, one day there won't be any room for honest filthdemons like Yngvi.

Remembering most of his way to the kitchens - when someone almost walks over the top of him because that's a hazard of being short for a dwarf, but well the joke's on them because Yngvi is the one that bowls them over and keeps going because he's sturdier than he looks - he looks up at her again. "D'you have a name?"

"Eleven years ago, after the Blight drove my family out of Fereldan and into Kirkwall. We had family there and - well. I know how much Kirkwall hated having us there, but I'll always consider it a home. My mother is buried there, after all."

She reached out immediately to balance the person that the dwarf nearly toppled over, giving him a sheepish smile, "Sorry, he's looking for something for his eye - oh, yes. I'm Bethany -- or rather Warden Bethany Hawke, but Bethany is just fine."

"Kirkwall smelled better before the dogshit got tramped everywhere." Bitter. Yngvi's always going to be bitter because you can only really do so much with people who don't have any sort of worldly goods or possessions, and when there were that many of them? Annoying. "Darktown got right cluttered, it was ours first."

Because it was. Carta was there, carving it out. They had the docks and they should've just stayed there, or, or, in a shocking notion, hopped back on the ships.

"Look down in future, f'fuck's'sake." Yngvi always says that as one word that isn't even really a word, it's more like punctuation or a pause to catch his breath, always on the inhale or the exhale. A habit picked up from one of the many numerous older Carta members who taught him when he was growing up. "That Hawke? The one with the shit book about them?"

Bethany stopped for a moment, before she lifted her chin a little as she followed. "Fair enough. We did take over a great deal of your home, mostly the worst parts, because that's all we were allowed to have." Her voice softened, "We wanted to share, and we wanted to survive. We never meant to put anyone out on purpose."

She gave the other man a sheepish smile, "He's a bit put out. He fell on his face. Sorry, no one means to be rude."

Another pause, before she chuckled, "The one and the same."

"You had the docks. And ships. You could've gone anywhere else." But that's humans all over, and why Yngvi has never felt guilty fleecing any sort of human same as he's never felt any sort of guilt fleecing a dwarf, and for all that Yngvi rolls with the punches that was a rough few years. "Don't get to call it the worst parts when it wasn't yours either, where d'you learn manners in Ferelden? Orlesians say dogs but then everyone and their mother harps on 'bout mabari being wise, bet a mabari wouldn't say that."

Maybe he'll ask Bronson next time he goes back or in the next letter he has to write. No one said he had to write serious reports. Especially not to check in on Aura Hardie surviving the not-so-tender mercies of Eleanor.

Honestly, stop apologising for him, he has a mouth. Also traps. As that man will find out. Or his arse will. Enjoy fuckboy.

But back to Kirkwall and Yngvi pulling a face because of course. What is his letter to the Boneflayers going to be like? 'Dear all, guess what I met the Champion's sister proper so do you have suggestions and when do I write to dad about this?' Because by all accounts, he should probably write the old man. Or old men. There are several of them who would want to know about Kirkwall related happenings landing at Yngvi's feet. "Well they owe me and mine an apology for reasons I shouldn't have to explain."

Dwarf plus apology plus Kirkwall shouldn't really be too hard, not with the attitude. Carta tends to just give off an aura really. There were a lot of them that got cut down in Kirkwall that never got bothered by anyone before some upjumped doglord stepped in. (He will go protest this to Gwenaelle too, these doglords everywhere.

By the way he is almost family to someone that's courting you, please enjoy your almost-in-law.)

All right, and now Bethany is going to get that little tip up at the chin. "We could have - if we didn't all wanted to die on those ships, or we had something in our pockets other than soot and dust. Ships cost money, serah." Her brown eyes narrowed, "Money we had to earn, which was not particularly easy when we were being shut down from Darktown to the Gallows for being Fereldans. ... "

Now -- it clicked. Now it started to make sense, one after another. She didn't have a lot of subtly, Bethany Hawke, but even she knew that outing a member of the Carta wouldn't do her any good. So she gave him a level look, before stating simply, "I won't apologize to you - because I know you won't apologize to me or mine. For obvious reasons."

She pointed him to a stool. "Sit. I'll get you the meat for your eye." Because despite every horrible thing this dwarf had said to her -- she was still here to help.

"So you go to Darktown and take the food out our mouths, Fereldan hospitality. Orlais is right about that then. Unless it's the de Launcets but I don't think think they're Orlesian anymore. I don't know what they are. Well-preserved. Or aged." Yngvi had been glad to be running off with Asher at that point because it had been miserable, the way it had just been worse. A sort of worse he hadn't really known possible until it had happened. "Oh and 'm not a serah, you lived there, you should know I'm not ever a serah."

(Not that it even comes out like that word, closer to s'ra, with the accent, just trips itself out of his mouth.)

Watching her, and the Tal-Vashoth chefs because of course, Yngvi can't escape that even when by rights he should've after all the times on the Wounded Coast and Asher liking it because he was a Reaver (and past tense is still weird, still raw and achey, but the point is) but the rest of them not so much, he shrugs. "Carta is Carta. We were there first, we'll be there last. Just saying. But I s'pose none of my friends blew up a chunk of Kirkwall."

Or anything else. Proof that you can't trust anyone but dwarves with lyrium in the end, possibly not even all dwarves. And it all happened because doglords came to Kirkwall. He'd be such a good war correspondent on whatever the Thedas version of Fox News is. Hire him. But instead of the stool because Bethany. Bethany look. At. Him. Okay you might strain your neck because for a dwarf he is short on account of the lack of sunlight, so he hops onto a sack of potatoes instead, reclining. He has sat in worse places, truth be told.

"Don't drop it, if it goes on my face then it's as good as my mouth and that means I'm eating it." So, do you want to guess when he last had a wash? Yes or no?

"None of us took the food from your mouths, that's ridiculous oversimplification." Bethany stated firmly, "And the de Launcets are Orlesian by way of Kirkwall so ... probably." She moved towards where they kept the meat in the colder part of the fortress, looking over her shoulder at him, "Really? Because you seem to have enough indignation for one."

She pauses at the door, looking down at the ground, before she looked over at the other man, "No, I suppose they haven't."

Opening the door, she found a small piece of chicken, then found a clean cloth. Beyond that, it is a stool, Yngvi, you can climb up. However, potato sack will work just as well. She gently rested the piece of meat into his hand. "Here, hold it on your eye. And you shouldn't eat it, you could get sick."

Only one thing occurs to him-

When he recounts this tale to the Outsider later, he won't be believed.

It's quite an entrance, and the showman/diplomat in Thranduil is suitably impressed, approximately until the dwarf- of course it's a dwarf- tumbles head over heels. He's left with questions, namely about the nugs, and how one might train nugs, and how the nugs knew how to get here- but charity overrides it, and he makes it down the last few steps from the battlements to watch from a safe distance of perhaps two meters.

"My friend," he says, in a voice not dissimilar to one Yngvi might have heard over his crystal. "-would you like some aid?"

He has his expression quite well in hand, considering.

Only one thing for it - open invitation for him to come trundling in with all his nugs. Throw some petals down. Feed him. Make a whole show of the thing. There are plenty of nugs to put a dent in Yngvi's appetite already.

(It's a really good way to get nugs to do things by the way. Just reciting every nug-based recipe. Or potential nugstitution you can come up with.)

To be fair to Yngvi, half his face is still number from the not-so-tender attentions of one Comte Emeric Vauquelin, rattling his merry way from Orlais to Skyhold in a hollowed out keg with many spoons and the remains of brandy. And everything else wedged into the keg. All his worldly goods. Various slankets. Weapons. Clothes. Traps. Oh wow look at those traps. The seats are containers of Avvar mead but those are just for him.

"Rump Roast? You talking to me now?" Look it wouldn't be the weirdest thing for a nug to start talking okay as he wheels his head to look at the nearest nug as he peers at it but nope, Rump Roast is just nosing at the dirt. "Wait--wait wait wait."

Legs where are-- right there. Legs. Legs there you are. And up he goes. And what is this conspiracy of tall people. "M'Lady's weird elf? Announce yourself."

He looks a mess, his belongings a mess, his nugs being in far better condition, which is good enough for Thranduil. And his gaze goes up, and up, until Thranduil's looking down and--

Wait, he knows this one. Odd name- dwarfy name, too many harsh sounds. "Thranduil. A pleasure to meet you- and Rump Roast."

(That he's become Gwenaëlle's elf is slightly enjoyable. He'll think about that later.)

"Do you require a healer?" He does look fairly roughed up- is his face supposed to be like that? Maybe that's just how dwarves are, as if the Smith simply threw clay at the wall at attached a mouth and ears, and pronounced it 'good enough'. Or maybe he's ill. Another step closer, to get a better look at Yngvi- and the nugs. Mostly the nugs.

Stroganugg, being a hardy soul who hasn't been bothered even once by Yngvi's threats, peers up at Thranduil too. Not the biggest of the nugs but the leader and if Yngvi does keep one for a lark, it'll be him. The rest he plans to just unleash upon the populace to roam free as nugs do, and if they get eaten then no one can actually prove it was Yngvi and not someone or something else. Rump Roast squeaks, Nug Wellington rolls over, takes four others with him.

Dwarves. What can you do.

"Thranduil." But Darktown tends to butcher names, and this sort of butchery renders it Frond-wheel quite cheerfully as he looks up in confusion. "Mate, this is nothing, you would not even believe what I can stand up to, it'd curl your hair. 'sides, what's a healer gonna do? Throw some halla piss at me and wiggle their fingers, charge me three silvers for the pleasure?"

(Yngvi you basically lived at the healing tents when Asher was dying, stop being an infant about this.)

He steps forward, not to aid Yngvi the Dwarf, but to reach for the tangle of nugs and harnesses, and set about gently righting them all. Nug Wellington is set to rights first, then the one next to him-- the poor things don't (don't?) have thumbs and can't do it themselves, and Thranduil-

simply thinks they are darling, a view wholly uninfluenced by certain black-eyed friends.

He's gently trying to convince one of them to let go, please, when he reminds himself there's more to this conversation than just the nugs, that Gwenaelle might like it if he helps a mutual friend. But he blinks- almost owlishly- when Yngvi says his name.

"Just so," he agrees. Actually, easing up on the hard 'f' to reach the odd sound that the first letter of his name makes when wrote properly in Sindarin, and Yngvi will have it better than most in Skyhold. The littlest nug finally gives in and Thranduil sets her upright only for her to decide that she doesn't want to, and fall on her side again. On to the next.

"Are these healers so ill-informed?" He's back to looking at the nugs. "I thought them to be somewhat competent, but if that is the best they can manage..."

The poor things also roll in their own mess so Yngvi has limited sympathy for them but not one of them has been eaten, and scouts have probably reported that most of the trip up the mountain was Yngvi, hauling the keg, the nugs trailing after. Like excited children on a trip. With a hungover uncle or something.

But tall elf, you are very interesting in your tallness why would tiny nug hands want to let go? Let them nose at you.

"If they had a proper alchemist - a good dwarven alchemist, can't believe I need to actually say that, the price of being here, Melisende killing me when she's off somewhere warm eating cakes with the rest - then maybe." His heart is broken, he cannot go on, but he has the remains of Emeric's brandy to console him. "Can't trust human healers, they're idiots, I mean what did most of the mages heal before now? They lived in towers. Papercuts or whatever happens when they trip over their skirts and fall down the stairs. Not dealing with Orlesian comtes in rude health."

He gives up on freeing them the moment it becomes truly apparent he won't get anything done, and settles for petting them absently, stroking their little ears, while refocusing on Yngvi. Courtesy. He can manage it for dwarves. Sometimes.

"What, exactly, did our mutual friend's father do to you?" Oh, he had heard the sounds, of course, but it hadn't kept his interest- Gwen having it seemingly well in hand, and it seeming voyeuristic to continue listening. There had been a lot of glass breaking, if he remembered correctly.

He's of absolutely no use on if they have an alchemist. He knows there's odd sounds that come from the undercroft when he goes down to the springs to bathe, but- not his problem.

"Orlesian hospitality usually reserved for servants or doglords." That about sums it up but Yngvi is feeling in a chatty mood now that he's here, and it won't be quite the same in a letter back to the others (Melisende's missive is going to be extensive given she was born and raised in Halamshiral's alienage herself) so he shrugs. It hurts. "We had dinner, then I brought up a name, he bellowed like a druffalo - have you seen a druffalo, they're loud, and big, and hairy, and if you mention that to anyone I will come for you in the night and shave you - then chased me. He has long legs. It's a big estate. Eventually he punched me until I slipped away."

Yngvi was laden with many spoons and much brandy by this point. He had also tried on several dresses for no reason beyond he felt like it and that's generally all the notion Yngvi needs to do anything.

"His aim is better with fists than the crossbow but I don't know how his shirt opened, still it was very dramatic. Very billowy. They write pillowbooks about that sort of thing, I might mention it to a friend or two actually but I dashed away into the night no thanks to my lazy steeds."

Said lazy steeds are just making a scene, crowding in for affection, where is your dignity. You're nugs. Stop this. Behave. Does he have to go eat a nug kebab in front of you to remind you of your proper place like he does whenever he's near halla or the Dalish because he will do it, he doesn't need nug-sleds now.

stuck the landing

i; arriving in style

Re: i; arriving in style

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