OPEN POST - there's a green glow coming from the library window

[mythalenaste]

WHO: Pel Ashara and everybody in Skyhold
WHAT: Pel returns from the Fallow Mire with crazy amounts of research and will wall herself up doing work and being totally antisocial unless you save her!
WHEN: 19 Firstfall...or is it the 20th? Today. Today and really, really late tonight.
WHERE: Skyhold courtyard and library
NOTES: This is prior to the general return from Skyhold, obviously. Pel just caught a ride back to Skyhold well ahead of the crowd.

Arrival

It turns out a large caravan full of pious Andrastian humans will leave a tiny heathen elf-woman alone if she carries herself like she's about to kick someone's ass. The trip from the Mire to Skyhold was uneventful. In fact, there was never a good enough reason to use her magic, so none of the van was tipped off that Pel is a mage.

Unfortunately, she had no pack mule, so she's having to haul a lot of crap around by herself. One of the nicer people let her keep her heavier things on his cart, but now she's having to get it all unpacked carrying it with her own two hands. She's too proud to ask for help, but you can offer it if you like.

Library

From the time she arrives, she's in the library. During the day, she can be found bent over books. Sometimes, she's asleep on top of one.

At night, long after the keep has gone to bed, a green glow can be seen in the library window, flickering like flame. If someone chooses to check this out, they will find Pel standing over a stone slab with a veilfire flame in her hand, held over her work like a candle. A rune on the slab gives a faint green glow in response. The fire reflects in the elf's eyes like a cat's as she stares suspiciously at you.

Comments

[byblow]

There wasn't a moment when Alistair decided not to go to the Fallow Mire to help, or any conscious and rational reason why he didn't. He's invented a few by now--someone ought to be here in case there's news, he's the one any Grey Wardens out hunting for them are most likely to recognize on sight, never know when there might be darkspawn in your mountaintop fortress somehow. He came briefly close to thinking about the fact that he hasn't put a toe into Ferelden in ten years, and then he veered away into thinking about something less fraught.

Anyway, he's here. He's been here. He's struggling to feel useful enough to justify the fact that he's been here, and being a pack mule for someone who lacks one is better than staring at clouds.

"Here," he says, stepping in toward Pel and her lots of crap with his hands already extended. "I've been training for this my whole life."

[mythalenaste]

A faint smile touches Pel's lips, just enough for her teeth to peek from between. It's not a reserved or stifled smile; her level of expression is just rather lower than other peoples'.

"For this, specifically? Carrying things for magic researchers?" She's not teasing him, just lingering in the joke for a bit. Lighthearted moments should be relished. "Or just carrying things?"

[byblow]

"Carrying things, generally," Alistair says, "but I do specialize in magic research things." He's doing his version of a straight face: unsmiling, almost, but with obvious effort and his eyes bright even with circles underneath them. He wiggles the fingers of his open hands invitingly--load him up.

[mythalenaste]

She finally grins properly, visibly relaxing, and hands him about as much as she herself would carry, which is no small weight. She's accustomed to hard work.

"Ma serannas." She loads herself up, hoists, and starts walking toward the keep. "It needs to go to the library. Since you're helping, I'll make a meal for us both when it's all moved."

[byblow]

Alistair is a few seconds slow to follow, distracted by peering at what he's been handed, but his legs are long enough that it's easy for him to catch up. Especially now they're talking about meals.

But--"Didn't you just get back from a bog?" he asks. "With corpses? I think letting you cook for me might make a bastard." (Ha.)

[mythalenaste]

"It's been days since I was at the bog," she points out as if the journey itself amounted to lying in bed for three days. "I cooked on the road, I can cook for you now. I've got a fresh pheasant someone traded me for a skein of yarn. Perfect size for two people."

[byblow]

Alistair isn't fully convinced--fresh from a bog or fresh from the long journey from a bog, either way, he should probably insist she get some rest or something first, but.

Pheasant. Fresh.

"All right, all right," he says. He slows to make sure she reaches the first set of stairs ahead of him, but he's only a step or two behind her on the way up. "You've bullied me into it."

[mythalenaste]

A soft laugh, a giggle low in her chest.

"Bullied? Sylaise bless you. What must it look like when I'm being nice, I wonder?"

[byblow]

"I think it would look like, Yes, Alistair, you're completely right and so thoughtful," he says, pitching his voice just enough higher to pass as an impression. "I'll let you cook while I take a nap, and I won't complain at all if you burn my pheasant."

That's the height of his ability to be ridiculous, anymore, and gravity--an exhaustion, and the song in his head, and the weight of everything--quickly pulls him back into himself. Less manic, less loud.

"I wouldn't really burn your pheasant," he says. "I'd only cook all the flavor out. You can take the man out of Ferelden..."

[mythalenaste]

More giggles, less restrained than the last. Elgar'nan help her, these sounds just don't come out of her like this, ever. Creators forbid anyone should hear her and thing she's devolving into some silly girl-child. She was never like that even when she was a silly girl-child.

"You wouldn't do worse to it than I would," she promises. "I'm not exactly an artisan cook, I just...make things so they're not raw anymore."

[byblow]

"That's all you really need."

Alistair is probably biased. But he's smiling wide, soaking up the laughter. He isn't like this to make people like him—not a good enough actor to fake it—but it's a nice side benefit. All the better if it's someone who doesn't seem to laugh that often. Like charming one of the sisters at the monastery, only they weren't so charmingly freckly.

"There's that sweet spot between not-raw and mushy slop, though, that I always have trouble hitting."

[mythalenaste]

"I usually cook meat till it's a bit dry. I'm always afraid of poisoning someone with undercooked meat."

She presses her lips together briefly, though the smile is still very much there.

"We could give the cook a coin and ask her to cook it for us?"

[byblow]

"I'm all out of coins," Alistair says, "but the kitchen staff likes me. Most of them. I carry things for them, too."

And someone (Zevran) told them who he was. That always 'helps.' But Alistair thinks they like him on his own merit, too, for the carrying and high-shelf reaching and the fact that he actually visits them to talk sometimes, so he wouldn't mind asking a favor.

[mythalenaste]

"Most valuable man in the Inquisition." It's teasing. No, actually, it's flirting, though she doesn't realize it until she's said it. "I wonder what other secret uses you might have."

Oh wait, that one might have been a little too flirtatious. Was it? Maybe?

[byblow]

If noticeably flirtatious is too flirtatious, then yes, maybe: his eyebrows raise and his smile goes a little uncertain--not in a shy way, more in a did you do that on purpose way--and he might blush. A little.

"Carrying is, ah. Definitely my speciality," Alistair says, slowly finding his metaphorical footing again. "Reaching tall things. If you play hide and go seek, you can hide behind me."

[mythalenaste]

At least the view would be nice, she thinks to say but doesn't. No, girl. No. The new uncertainty in his smile is not a good sign, nor is the way he turns the conversation back in the original direction. Good on him, probably. Grey Wardens are married to the Blight. Also, can't have children. Some hormonal girl-child in her head whimpers, But whyyyyhyhyhyyy?

She blushes faintly and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Not that there was one conveniently misplaced for it, so she's really tucking nothing behind her ear but air.

"Are you calling me short?" she teases.

[byblow]

"Well, I can't call you tall."

He's not not-flirting because of anything in particular. He's not even really not-flirting. Alistair shoots her a smile as they curve around to the second set of stairs, and it's equal parts teasing and pleased.

But he's a Warden, yes, and awkward even when he's not out of practice, with a loyal, lumbering heart and now a very mournful-sounding Old God trying to convince him to go underground, so. That's the best he's got at the moment.

"My actual specialty," he says, conversational and cautious, "is being a few vows short of a Templar." One essential disclosure down, three or four to go. "I was rescued just in time, but I've still got the touch."

[mythalenaste]

That is very hard to react to when she is carrying stacks of things up the stairs. She goes quiet for a moment, her smile vanishing as she processes that. It runs through her head a few times before she realizes it's not a veiled threat. Probably. Is it? Is Alistair's charm a tool to get past a mage's defenses and...do what? Warn them about the secret specialty he might break out if they go rogue? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? She's so accustomed to being wary of templars that the very last option she arrives at is that he's disclosing a personal fact as a reward for good conversation.

That's right, she thought of 'widespread templar conspiracy with the Wardens' before she thought of 'I am making friends with a person.'

When she arrives there, she gives a breathless, relieved laugh, setting her load on a table in the library.

"I suppose that's appropriate. I specialized in being an apostate."

[byblow]

"Well," Alistair says, adding his armful to the table next to hers, "you can't be very good at it, since I caught you." Does that make sense? Not at all. He doesn't care. "But I'd have been a rotten Templar, so I guess it balances out."

[mythalenaste]

A laugh. She can't decide if that's flirting or not, so she'll assume not unless given real evidence otherwise. "At least you don't like hunting mages. Anyway, I think I caught you first."

[byblow]

"If that's how you want to tell it." He glances sideways to grin at her again, then taps the top of a sheet of notes. "What's all this?"

[mythalenaste]

"Research. Veilfire runes. They're an ancient elven magic I'm trying to decode, as it were."

[byblow]

"Oh," Alistair says. "Ellana mentioned those." He scans the papers with plenty of interest but minimal comprehension. "I used to collect runestones. Little ones. They didn't even do anything, I just--" He shrugs, then smiles again. "Round two? I can go without you if you want to start organizing this."

[mythalenaste]

"No, I'll help. Between the two of us, we ought to be able to make it in one trip. What kinds of runes did you collect?"

She starts with him back down the stairs.

[byblow]

"Oh, useless ones." He sounds cheerful about it. "As far as I know, anyway. They were gifts." Less cheerful there. But they still mean something to him, even if it's no longer something simple, same as the Andrastian amulet he wears under his shirt. "Here, I have--" Two of them, one black and one white, in the the leather pouch on his belt. He fishes them out on the way down the stairs and holds them out on an open palm.