IV. OPEN.

[glandival]

WHO: Sabine and other people who don't care enough about things Sabine cares about probably. >8(
WHAT: A catch all post with prompts!
WHEN: After losing her mind on the crystals through to the end of Cloudreach.
WHERE: The valley; the main hall, the archery range, the kitchens.
NOTES: Happy to construct some specific starters, too, if you'd like to do something different than the below!

THE VALLEY;

[ A break in the Shitty Weather™ sees a little life in amongst the tent city established in the valley. Incessant ice and sleet is quick to melt into mud, and some apply their hands to the fruitless battle of clearing the established roads and other sundry chores. Small fires are maintained, supplies are moved, and structures that had suffered the driving showers of mountain spring-snow are repaired.

Sabine has been helping with some of these things, but is taking a break.

As are three small elven children, who seem familiar enough with her and vice versa to make a game of the unusually muddy land. The game is without order, largely made up of chasing in circles, with a side of tickling, and a modest amount of mud-throwing when they seem like they can get away with it. Feet sink deep and lift high out of icy mud-slick, and laughter is sharp, loud, stark against the pervading sense of misery that bad weather brings. Sabine has an easy, toothy grin, catching the littlest girl with tickling hands, generating a happy shriek.

Which is where it ends. A second elven woman, hair as blonde and fine as her littlest siblings, swoops in as swiftly as a hawk to take the little girl's hand. Her flatly guarded look down at Sabine communicates everything it needs to to have Sabine remain where she is in her semi-crouch, a flash of injury crossing her face as the children are shepherded away, the sounds of complaint dimming into the background.

This isn't the first time, and won't be the last.

But at least the elder of the small family waits until they are out of earshot before she warns the littler ones about staying away from the Rifters and the shardbearers, for all that Sabine can imagine it, and has heard it before. She stands, again, shaking her skirt off of dirt, expression schooled back into something severe and neutral. ]

THE MAIN HALL, THE ARCHERY RANGE, THE KITCHEN;

[ The driving rain thunders against the stone walls and glass windows, forcing people indoors, where it occasionally feels too full if not for the pervasive illness that knocks people back into bed.

Sabine is not sick, nor in bed, seated on an unoccupied stretch of table, legs crossed, while she applies knife to wood to create small carvings she has to squint to see in the flickery light of the nearby hearth fire. Her mood has dragged in some of the outside cloud, her brow pinched and her mouth hard, and when she looks up enough to catch the eye of an Orlesian, disapproval simmering behind a mask, she bares her teeth until they turn away again. Slivers of pale wood gather on the table in front of her, a draft occasionally scattering them onto the ground.

The sky opens, for a brief amount of time. She tests arrows that she has made against targets, and doesn't mind being openly capable where others can see, her skirts still floury from pre-dawn baking efforts.

No matter what the sky is doing, habit brings her here again, the kitchens that are always warm and rarely empty. There is at least one cook who says rabbit like an endearment, and a sort of top-down kitchen hierarchy from the pâtissier through to the boy that washes potatoes, standing on a stool, but otherwise a pervading equality that depends only on your ability to work hard and be discreet when you steal the occasional pear, or mouthful of cooking wine, or wedge of cheese. Learned lessons mean that no one actually gets Sabine to cook anything, but she sweeps, plucks feathers off chickens, breaks down vegetables and lamb bones for stock with a knife she wields unflinchingly.

Later, she takes her hair out of its braid, and nurses an ale, listening to the clamour of the kitchen nearby with what could be fondness if she wasn't driven to distraction. ]

Comments

[glandival]

[ The glance up that Sabine gives Alistair, in this first instance, is a little guarded -- like perhaps he is making fun of her rather than himself. But his shoulders fall out of their horizon and his tone shifts, and she wrinkles her nose too late, a suppression of amusement in spite of herself.

She cleans her knife against a cloth. ]

He says that the things he has done are worse than that of de Chevin. [ She shrugs, a jerky, irritated movement, watching Alistair's knife. ] He seems to have more friends than de Chevin. Either he does not understand, or he thinks too much of the things he has done--

--or perhaps he is merely biding his time with you. [ Sabine reaches out, scooping up onion quarters to deposit into pot. ] And we are such fools.

[byblow]

Well, [ Alistair says, smile flaring briefly back to life, but he has yet to replenish the aforementioned energy, so that's it—a hint that if he were less tired or the topic less serious, Sabine might have had to endure some riffing on their foolishness or Zevran's commitment to the long game before Alistair brought himself back around to the point.

She's welcome. ]

He may have done worse things. [ Bystanders. Children. And Alistair has cut down men who were only hungry and desperate or who didn't know anything except that their job was not to let anyone pass, walked away from burning cities on orders—

It is purely (genuinely) coincidence that this is the moment he has to wipe his eyes with his wrist, nose burning from the onions. ]

But not because he thought anyone was beneath him.

[glandival]

[ It might make it less complicated if Alistair had gone and said something like because he had no choice, the usual reason behind why elves might do bad things.

But at least it sounds honest.

Sabine is quiet and discontent, turning her back to heft a pot of water left simmering, to transfer it from one vessel to the other with a sudden rush of steam that she turns her face away. A little careless and haphazard. Her kitchen duties are kept proportionately limited. Once done, she sets it back down, a hand up to pick where loose hair sticks damply to her cheeks and forehead. ]

Then say Michel de Chevin is the worst thing he has done, [ she decides, a slight dismissal of the topic. The less she thinks about Michel de Chevin's face, the better. But on that note, in muttered aside-- ] He is not even so handsome, as shems go.

[byblow]

If he's not handsome, I'm in a lot of trouble.

[ At the moment--sick, pale, circles under his eyes, leaking onion tears--it isn't the most ridiculous thing he's ever said, but it's still ridiculous, intentionally, with a follow-up sideways smirk meant to relieve her of any social burden to take him seriously and say something reassuring. Not that she would anyway.

Onions chopped, he slides them toward her with the blade of the knife. ]

Are you from Val Royeaux?

[glandival]

[ Follow-up sideways smirk is met with pertly arched eyebrow and a rolling look up and down before keeping assessment to herself, deliberately. She gathers chopped vegetables into cupped hands, throws them into the pot. The steam issuing from it sticks fine curls of red to her cheeks.

Which are pink, by virtue of the kitchen warmth, and not the question. It sounds like an attempt to nudge the conversation away from the awkwardness that Michel de Chevin's presence creates, and yet, here we are again.

Oh well! ]

I am from Halamshiral, [ she says, with a thin, anaemic smile as she closes the pot, and lifts it to place over fire. In several hours, its contents will become food. She wipes her hands on her apron, lifts her eyebrows. A jab; ] We must all sound the same to you.