faderift | In the turning of the seasons, in life and death

WHO: Church, Malcolm, Rachette, YOU
WHAT: Present timeline catch-all
WHEN: Guardian /wiggly hand
WHERE: Up down all around Skyhold
NOTES: Nab me on plurk if you want a specific starter

Church is starting to spend a lot more time in the tavern than he ever did before. Sometimes he's just hanging around, taking some notes. Sometimes he's cleaning up tables with a rag. Sometimes you can actually see him in the back doing what may or may not be actual work. Crazy! He's also spending quite a bit of time around the stables, trying really hard not to look intimidated by the steeds, learning to put on saddles, and you may even see him up on one. This is madness. This is Skyhold.

Rachette does a lot of training, whether it's with her blades, doing her best to cut up a dummy, or doing sick backflips off walls or generally trying to get her parkour on, or at a table with a bunch of scrap fiddling with traps. She's also fond of going out hunting. You can perhaps find her debating with a merchant about the price of turning a rabbit pelt into a pair of gloves or a nice hat. She sometimes hangs nearby classes without trying to look like she's actually sitting in. Learning but not like...being a nerd okay shut up who likes learning not her.

Malcolm hovers around the healer tents more than he ever usually does, either visiting those injured or getting injuries checked up on. He also seems to be making a point of starting to see if there's anything he can do to help despite not being a healer. His training has more to do with keeping the skills he does have sharp, whether through archery (where he has an interesting new bow that hasn't made an appearance yet), or working out, or sparring. He's willing to give advice to people that seek it. And as ever, there's always some point where he can be seen around the kennels or otherwise being with is poodle companion Milady, playing, training, being at least mildly adorable.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A face Kirk had never seen around the tables before? Church's. That could of course just be happenstance, never being together in the same place at the same time. An entirely possible occurance, and yet he doubted that. Which had always led him to the belief that Church simple wasn't interested in horses. All well and good. Kirk only was because walking everywhere had not appealed, nor had riding pillion.

"You know they're pretty much the one animal in Thedas that doesn't bite, right?" Kirk asked him, making for his personal steed, Atlas, across the way from the beast Church was currently trying to look tough against.

"Uh, demonstrably not true. They can totally bite. It's just that their teeth aren't gonna rip you to shreds. Also? They kick like a motherfucker. So it's not like they're not dangerous in their own right."

That's not really why he's making a show of himself, though. Horses aren't, generally, at all scary. Just...he feels kind of stupid because of course riding horses wouldn't be a quick thing to learn, but this still feels like a long time to figure it out. Ugh. Dumb!

"This guy just likes chewing on my hair, though, so that's okay. I think maybe he knows me from when I used to sleep in the stables... On accident. Not. Y'know. Not because I didn't have anywhere."

Well, all of that was technically true. But if you trained right they were just fine. Kirk hadn't liked them much at first, but now he really did like Atlas, and Boggy too. Though poor Boggy wasn't allowed out.

"Hey, no judgement. Stables are warm and you'd have privacy and not be crammed against some strange. Seems a perfectly legit place to sleep," he assured the other, opening the stall door and going in. He reappeared a moment later leading Atlas by his halter to the cross ties, the horse towering over him and built like a tank. For all of that, the gray was quiet and followed direction, looking sleepy more than anything.

"You heading out for a ride?" he asked him, opening a trunk in front of Atlas' stall to pull out his grooming gear.

"Heading...somewhere. Maybe just a trot around Skyhold. I'm, uh, I'm still learning the ropes, more or less. You...have a fucking tank." It's an apt word. Sheila was fucking massive. But quite personable once you got to know her. Hay Fever was not near so big and, honestly, was probably used to dumbasses learning to ride. "Where are you going with a tank-horse?"

Atlas jolted at the burst of later, ears flicking back and forth and raising his head slightly in the cross-ties - which only served to make him taller. Kirk patted his neck to calm him, catching his own breath as he began to brush Atlas down with quick strokes.

"I won't argue that, but he's wider than the smaller breeds. Makes him easier to sit on," he said, and that had been a major factor in his choice of breed type. "He's really quite lazy if I let him get away with it." Atlas snorted and his head lowered down again, eyelids dropping slightly which did nothing to disprove Kirk's assessment.

"Just for a short ride outside the walls," he shrugged, looking to Church. "Do you want to come with me? Atlas is good with the other horses, and it's better to ride with a partner, especially if you aren't used to it."

"Uhhhh, sure. Sure! Lemmie just--let me get all set up here, with the, uh, everything." Saddles and things. The essentials, in fact, to horse riding that isn't bareback because he's not that dumb. Seems that Atlas is content to get brushed and be a lazy fuck, which is fine by Church.

He ducks back into the stalls to grab the gear and gets Hay Fever all set up as carefully as he can. "I'll bet he's good with other horses. God-emperor of horses. You know, are any of these guys war horses? Like, the kind you can train to trample people in battle and shit?"

Kirk looked over at him, one brow expertly raised. You sounded so very convincing Church, truly. He really shouldn't judge to harshly though. He had hardly been any better a year ago when he first came here, after all.

"You think he's big, you should see Bucephalus - Iskandar's mount. That's a god-emperor kind of horse," Kirk chuckled, leaving Atlas with his saddle blanket on and coming over to Church and Hay Fever. He patted her neck and nodded to the girth. "Do you want me to do a check? Just in case. It's really embarrassing when you try and mount and the saddle slides out from under you because you didn't tighten everything enough." He had no idea how Hay Fever took the bit, but he hoped it easy.

"And yeah, I think a couple might be - war horses, that is. Bucephalus is, I'm fairly sure, and it would make sense for some of the Templars here to have war trained mounts."

In the turning of the seasons, in life and death

stables

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