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[ombranera]

WHO: Zevran, Luciano, and YOU
WHAT: Catch all for the month
WHEN: June/Justinian
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Prose or Brackets are fine, roll with what you like most. If you want a specific prompt hit me up on plurk @ here!

[ After the Baptism (Early Justinian) ]

Early in the evening, after some small ceremony in Skyhold's chapel, Zevran can be found surrounded by his Kestrels, sitting quietly in a corner of The Herald's rest as they played music and sang a great many traditional Antivan pieces. There is food and wine and dancing and Zevran partakes only a little. While he may look tired and a little overwhelmed, the night is a joyous one all the same. In his arms, on his lap, or sitting on the table with Zevran's steadying hand upon his back is a small elven child. All wide blue eyes and blonde curls, tanned skin that is marred only by the smudge of ashes in a circle on his forehead as is custom, dressed in a simple cotton shift Luciano Arainai claps and squeals in turn, gnawing on whatever is within reach or patting down Zevran's shirt with sticky hands. He is a child, they are sticky, it is a known fact. To the end of the night exhaustion catches hold for both, leaving the infant cranky and Zevran struggling to soothe him long enough to slip away to their rooms.


[ Garden ]

Afternoons find Zevran lounging in the garden- fresh air is both good for him and supposedly healthy for children- as long as he is able to keep Lucci from shoving things into his mouth that are not meant to be eaten. Which is everything. Which means it is less lounging and more tugging upon a leash and harness he has rigged to let his child roam but not too far- only a few feet from where he is sprawled and sketching upon a blanket. Most of his attention is actually on his son but it does the boy well to assume he has leave to explore. At least until he crawls back to demand food or attention or- whatever it is infants want. Zevran is still learning to interpret his various burbles and shrieks.


[ Courtyard ]

Zevran is, for the moment, trapped under the dead weight of his son- the slightest shifting earns a familiar screwing up of Lucci's face that has him resigned to simply leaning back against the tree where he'd stopped walking to shift his grip earlier and wait out the nap. He dare not doze himself- too tense against the open area, how vulnerable they are, how exposed. Tensing too much causes the same small sounds of upset and thus he is forced to sit, mind that he does not lock up, and wait for Lucci to fall deep enough asleep that he might carry him back to their room or rouse himself enough to make the trip worthwhile.


[ Hot Springs ]

"Your voice does carry, you know." Idle and conversational, Zevran has found a shallower edge of the hot springs when he'd truly rather a deep soak- but elven infants do not swim well and as such he must sit over here. With a shrieking, splashing child rigged safely in some manner of wicker basket he'd lowered into the water to keep Lucci from falling over backward and drowning. And to keep these little floating toys (maker only knows who gave them to him, he cannot recall) from floating away. "Yes, yes, splashing the water is marvelous fun- please hold still."

Not that Lucci is one to listen, wriggling under Zevran's hands as he tries to clean...something...sticky from his son's hair. "What is this, honey? How did you get honey in your hair? When were you near honey?"


[ Training Grounds ]

There are rare days when Lucci is not quite so prone to shrieking and crawling, not quite so intent on escape and Zevran can wrap him in a sling of sorts, tucked up against his chest, and actually train his Kestrels. It is an adjustment, every so often he must away to change the child's soiled underclothes or to feed him and the extra weight is odd and leaves him sore at the end of a few hours- but with one hand on Lucci's back to support him, the other gesturing as he speaks in rapid fire Antivan, directing his Kestrels through their maneuvers.

Comments

[ombranera]

His mind was too busy skittering away from the idea. Lucci was enough of a handfull. Considering the others as such? He would go mad. "Yes, he is teething, no, they were not bothering him at the time. He was not hungry, he did not need to be changed- I think he simply felt like yelling."

[the_effect_she_has]

One corner of her mouth quirked up, but she cleared her throat, "Sometimes we all just want to hear our own voices. Sing our own songs. Even if it's just yelling."

[ombranera]

"Perhaps he could learn to do so quietly." He will never recover his hearing should Lucci screech like this until he learns words.

[the_effect_she_has]

"Have you tried singing to him? It might distract him from yelling - so he has to listen instead of make his own noise." She hooked her fingers into the pockets of her jacket. "If nothing else, he might learn words faster."

A pause, then a keen look. "Just how many lessons do I have to give him before you let me hold him?"

[ombranera]

"One does not barter for the right to hold an infant." Zevran rolled his eyes, carefully shifting against the tree to find somewhere more comfortable against the tree. Luccio shifts against Zevran's chest, huffs out a little burble of sound- and stills. "We will have to see how he takes to you when he is awake."

[the_effect_she_has]

"Oh, well. I suppose I shall have to work on bribery." She looks at him, before she shakes her head, "Would you at least like me to get you a chair? That doesn't look at all comfortable."

[ombranera]

"I don't know if you've noticed- but I am too afraid of waking him to move." Even breathing too deeply seemed a risk- which is no great trouble for an assassin.

[the_effect_she_has]

"He looks like he's conked out - you could probably even put him down on a blanket and he'd keep sleeping." She commented wryly, "Beyond that -- what happens when you fall down? You can't keep that up forever."

[ombranera]

"I thought that earlier and he made it quite clear he was displeased." Still. Tentatively, he tugged Lucci from his shoulder enough to slip down and sit at the base of the tree- and there was no fussing.

"...In my pack, on top? There is a blanket." Perhaps they might manage this after all.

[the_effect_she_has]

She slipped over to the pack, and took out the blanket of the bag. Holding it out, she looked at the ground. "Do you want me to put it down there?"

[ombranera]

"Yes, that would be best. There is shade with the tree and this is as good a place as any. He's fallen asleep under the bed before." Zevran had no room to judge.

[the_effect_she_has]

"Well, I fall asleep in trees ... " She put down the blanket, making sure to fold up one end for Lucci's head, so he could rest comfortably. "He's big, for nine months."

[ombranera]

"You are not an infant." Not a chubby, sleepy infant- Zevran shifted Lucci with great care from his torso to the blanket, tucking one side around him and keeping one hand on him as he settled. It was strange to see him splayed out so peacefully when he knew the screaming fits that could be had. "Is he? I would not know."

[the_effect_she_has]

"True. I'm a Katniss." Her lips twisted faintly at the corners, before she takes a seat off the blanket, making sure the sun doesn't hit the baby's face.

"Hmmm. Prim was a tiny thing, when she was nine months. Father says I was the same way."

[ombranera]

"And what a thing to be, to be a katniss." He crackled a soft laugh, combing his fingers through Lucci's hair. When he slept it was less stressful, less strange. A little easier to understand that 'parental devotion' in short stretches before the terror set in once more.

"Most have said he seems small, but then he is an eleven infant and his mother and I are not terribly large ourselves. Compared to Alistair? He is tiny."

[the_effect_she_has]

"We are strange and wild creatures, we Katnisses. Although I am fairly certain I am the only one." She watched him stroke his son's hair, and felt a stab in her own chest. Ah, she did miss her father.

"I think anyone compared to Alistair would be tiny. The man is the size of a small house." She stated tartly. "He makes me seem short and I have my father's height."

[ombranera]

"Well you humans do tend to run large, I will give you that." And elves tend to run small, even the taller ones. Perhaps height was a disadvantage in the wild or something like that, though he could not imagine why being shorter would be of more use while living in the dales.

Dwarves being small and stout and of the underground? Made sense.

[the_effect_she_has]

"Hey, I would prefer that the elf-blood let me be smaller." She stated wryly, "Do you know how much easier it would be to hunt if I moved as quickly as a full-blooded elf does in the woods?"

She'd been hunting with Cyril - he could slip through anywhere and not make a sound. Merrick was even quieter than that.

[ombranera]

"That is, alas, not at all how it works." Otherwise Alistair would be a great deal smaller as well- and Michel might have more than the mere slightly fine features that came with the blood. "Elves are elves, there is no full about it. Human is human and blood is, as ever, a question of legality in the end."

Why else would he have his son?

"Stealth and agility come with practice and training- though I will admit, the Crows took in elves for more than mere looks- we are better suited to such things for our stature and our inherent urban invisibility. No one looks at an elf twice." Unless they found them pretty.

[the_effect_she_has]

She looks at him then, her brows drawn down at her mouth twists again, "You know, it's funny, but I hear the exact opposite from my Dalish friends. They say I should pretend to be fully and completely human, because I have that 'advantage', and no one looks at a human twice."

She looks down at Lucci, her grey eyes quiet, "I didn't realize the point was to be invisible. I thought the point was to live because you're alive."

[ombranera]

"There is no pretending about it, Katniss. You are human." That anyone would lead her to believe otherwise, regardless of her parentage, is baffling to him. "Humans are just as invisible- but in a better way. You are but one face in the crowd. Elves?"

Lucci shifted in his sleep, sighed. "Elves are not noticed much like one does not notice the furniture. We are simply there. And oftentimes if you are able to go without being noticed? Life is a great deal kinder to you."

[the_effect_she_has]

"I'm a human to you, Zev. I'm a human to all elves." She looked up at him, but for once it felt good to say it outloud, and not like she was pulling out teeth. She'd give the Nightmare demon that - it made her finally face this. "I might even be just human to some humans, because that's what happens when an elf and a human have a baby, it's a human baby. But to most? My blood makes me even less than an elf. At least that means elves are breeding with elves, but to breed with a human?"

She snorted softly, looking at the tree through the leaves, "I think half-bloods are considered slightly above dogs, to elves and to humans. So you're right, sometimes it is better to be invisible."

Grey eyes found golden ones, her smile quiet, "But sometimes it's better just to be you. And ... not be afraid of what people say you are."

[ombranera]

"...Bullshit." Humans of elf parentage having it worse than an elf? "What precisely have you endured to make you think this?"

A lifetime of slavery, of servitude? A childhood in the alienages? Scavenging in the forest for some shred of dignity and supposed history torn from her grasp before she was ever born?

[the_effect_she_has]

Well. Sooner or later she was due to have this conversation. She could keep some details out of it, but not all. "Raising my sister and I from the age of ten, because the Chantry wouldn't take us in. Dealing with the catcalls and insults of the people around me, even as they bought my furs and my meat. People trying to take advantage of my sister and I, until I put a knife to their balls, because a half-blood's virtue matters not at all. Being told if I show my face in a Dalish camp, that I'll be killed because blood or not, I'm just another shem. Being paid half of what other hunters are paid, because of whom my mother, or father was."

She stopped there, because her voice was starting to crack - and Zevran didn't deserve her anger, and she didn't want Lucci to hear this bitterness. Besides ... "I apologize. I know it has to be worse for full-blooded elves. I just ... I guess I've been frustrated for a long time with the idea that things are just so easy for me, when they weren't."

[ombranera]

"So you had a slightly better childhood than most alienage and dalish elves, and a somewhat shittier life than the average human scavenger- how did all these people know who and what you were to the extent that they would shun and shame you for it?" Did the girl have no survival instinct whatsoever? Here she had been quite open of her parentage for reasons beyond Zevran's understanding- but to have done it for so long when so vulnerable?

Did she wish herself and her sister to die?

"Did you wear a sign about your neck claiming your parents for all to see? How did you survive this long if it has been like this for you, and you've changed precious little of how you present yourself to the world?" It was baffling. Zevran sat, one hand on his son's hair, baffled.