faderift | all of nature wild & free

"I don't have the flair for it." Antivans are, after all, terribly flamboyant and theatrical. She cannot quite manage that.

Hopping takes a bit of work- and even then she swears under her breath as her foot skids, leading her to stumble into Ruby. "Merde- remind me to have someone clean this."

A beat.

"I had...toast this morning?"

"Oh, woah." Just quietly, hands falling to Adelaide's waist to steady her, gaze dropping to check how she's standing, if she's limping more, mouth quirked with concern. "You okay? I can--" What can she do? "-- Would carrying you be an overreaction?" Probably.

And, fondly exasperated, "Figures. I packed food already."

"I am fine, Red. Truly. I can walk the rest of the way down." Maybe. Mostly. "...Can you even lift me?"

Ruby is stronger than the average woman, this she knows but- it is difficult to wrap her mind around being carried by someone only a little taller than her.

"Okay." Though she tilts her head a little, a good natured sort of look. "Is the Pope a Catholic?"

"...is the who, what?" She does not know your strange, foreign sayings Red.

"Riiight."

Huh, the smile becomes self-deprecating. "Is... the Divine Andrastian?"

Hopeful, uncertain. "Maybe that one gets lost in translation."

"Ah- a rhetorical, obvious statement that is to be universally understood as so." A beat. "You truly think you can carry me?"

Oh thank God.

"O ye of little faith." Lightly said, Ruby offers a wry smile. "I'll show you, if you want. You can be technically certain."

"It does bear testing, this theory." And there are quite a few stairs left. With a faint sigh of resignation, Adelaide shifts her weight. "How do you want me?"

"Just as you are is fine." Ruby just checks the pack on her back, sets a hand at the small of Adelaide's back as warning, and with a great deal of care - and ease - scoops her into a bridal carry. She could easily be carrying nothing at all.

"Is this okay?" Just checking before she starts walking. "I could give you a piggyback ride, if you prefer."

"...This seems slightly unfair." That she does not even need to loop an arm around Ruby's shoulders. That she can simply lift without so much as a grunt of effort. While not massive Adelaide is not insubstantial and being carried like this-

It makes her feel almost delicate.

"This allows more dignity." A beat. "And I shall be on your back as a wolf long enough."

"I'm struggling to imagine you without dignity, honestly," Ruby offers with a breath of amusement as she starts walking down the stairs.

"If it's any consolation, I also get really, really hungry. It's a problem." It's especially a problem when trying to operate on limited rations, and when you don't want to hunt away all the animals other people might need to supplement their own food.

Although, this way, they can make it down the stairs considerably faster.

"It is not something that happens often." To remain poised in public is something she takes pride in- it's something of a requirement for her now. "Mm. Are you able to get enough to eat?"

If it is a problem she might have to pull strings. Subtle strings but- strings none the less.

"Yeah, yeah." A false roll of her eyes. "Lord it over the rest of us mere mortals." Her tone is too fond and the smile too obvious for there to be even a chance that it's genuine.

Excuse her, she just needs to turn slightly so someone can get past, before looking to Adelaide with surprise. "Mostly." More accurately that would be sometimes, or more often than not, so long as she's away from Skyhold itself. "I don't exactly want to decimate the rabbit and squirrel populations of the Frostbacks. Those refugees have a hard enough time as it is." But, a little shrug, and more playfully, "There's always bears."

And they make it to the bottom of the stairs, Ruby angling them just enough that Adelaide can grab the door handle, because she only has so many hands.

"I am as mortal as the next person- otherwise I wouldn't have a broken leg." Still she snorts a faint laugh, turning her attention to opening the door and the problem of keeping Ruby fed and content. Winter has come and gone but hunting in the mountains is difficult for any creature, let alone a wolf Ruby's size.

She will have to mull this over for some time. "Must it be meat?"

That limits their resources somewhat.

"Might just be your Achilles Heel. Or Achilles Entire-Leg." To clarify, "he's a figure from mythology in the world without magic. His mother dipped him in a magical river to make him pretty much invincible, but she held him by his heel, so that was his one weakness." It occurs to her that Snow and David fought Medusa and alongside Lancelot, but she'll spare the bit about myths and stories and fairy tales having roots in her native world's reality.

"Hmm?" Oh, right. "No, whatever's fine. Meat was in theory easier to supplement whatever I was having without harassing the kitchens, but it doesn't have to be." Hunting as the Wolf meant, in theory, she could eat more without others missing out.

They're about to step into the main hall, and though Adelaide might need help with the steps down to the courtyard, Ruby pauses rather than just charging on through. "Okay to keep being carried?"

More people, dignity, comfort, all those things

"...I do not know that we have any tales quite like that in Orlais- mostly due to a general reservation when it comes to magic. More often than not those that use it are tricked and killed for attempting to make their lives simpler by 'cheating'." Deals with demons and the like.

She could do with less of them.

"Mm." That is a thoughtful mm. That is a Mm of plans being quietly made. Ignore the Mm.

"It is faster for you to carry me." She says, looping an arm around Ruby's shoulders. As though that offers her greater dignity than simply being carried. "I can walk about later."

The arm around her shoulders should not be comforting, shouldn't make her get the butterflies cliche and should definitely make her feel bad. One out of three isn't bad, though. Her smile softens without her permissions and Ruby bobs her heads in a little nod, striding through the hall and to the extetnal staircase.

"Depending where you're from a lot of mythology has mixed messages," Ruby agrees. "And fairy tales, actually. There are some messed up variations of stories." And, she frowns. "And the wolf is always a guy. And usually not also human."

Should she be concerned by the mm? She's Uncertain.

"Now that is hardly fair." Women can be wolves just as well as men. "I suppose they do not wish to examine the duality of existence all that closely. They are parabels to be but one thing and that thing had best be whatever everyone else is lest you fall into ruin and blood."

Bitter? Perhaps a touch.

"Also I think there was a sexual thing. Little red riding hood being chased by the big bad wolf?" A little shrug. "They liked to make Red the victim, in the stories. Sometimes she killed the wolf, but usually a huntsman came and saved her. Or she died. And usually her granny died."

Easily said, but not without weight, abd she looks at Adelaide apologetically.

"Sorry. A little grim."

"The loss of innocence at the hands of a predator?" Were Thedas more sexist she'd say something about shaming a woman for her sexuality but-

That isn't a thing in most of Thedas- certainly not in Orlais, and thus that commentary doesn't even occur. "...Most tales with morals involve death of some sort."

"That," she acknowledges, with a little tilt of her head. Adelaide might not say it, but Ruby doesn't shy away from it too much. At least, not with Adelaide. She just takes a second to glance down the stairs carefully, before she starts their descent down to the courtyard. "Also there's this thing back home about 'red women,' which is like... I guess really it's meant to be promiscuity or something, but pretty much any woman who has some sort of sexuality can be called a red woman. It's a pretty flexible standard of misogyny. I honestly have no idea if that has anything to do with the fairy tale, but when I was given my cloak this girl in my class started talking about it. Said they should all start calling me 'Red' because even my grandmother thought it suited me. Basically she was calling me a whore."

Ruby makes a little face, before her mouth catches in a smile. "Peter turned it around though. He started calling me Red affectionately, and it stuck in a good way, so. There you go. I didn't look too hard into the academic analysis or whatever or Red Riding Hood stories in the world without magic, but uh... yeah."

And here they are, at the bottom of the steps. "Sorry, that turned into a ramble."

"...I've been calling you a whore- that is what you are telling me." Why a color would- well red is supposedly the color of passion and love so she could see an argument made but it does not make sense to her, why such a thing would be written like that. Why a woman would not be allowed to have her lovers without shame aside from the general tut tutting from the Chantry for doing so without being wed, which is less a question of virtue and more one of having a stable home for children that might come from said lovers.

Adelaide remains puzzled, frowning into the distance before peering up to Ruby. "Is your name Ruby, Red, or something else then? I know you prefer Red, but..."

"No! No, you haven't. Red is a nickname Peter gave me, and it made Violet mad because she wanted to use it to insult me." She huffs, shaking her head. "Even Granny calls me Red, these days, so."

They're on even ground now, mostly, but she's just going to keep on walking, and spare Adelaide the pain of walking and treacherous tussocks of grass and stones.

"Ruby is the name the Dark Curse gave me when it took our memories. I was Ruby to everyone for twenty-eight years. And Red was a nickname." She leans ever so slightly closer to Adelaide, conspiratorial. "Even Snow doesn't know my real name, you know. Telling someone's a pretty big deal."

It's not, actually; the ridiculous hint of a smile might give her away.

"So long as I have not been calling you anything that would offend." Normally it is not something she would have to worry about- a name is a name and a title is a title- but Ruby has no title and only the one brief name that she has seen fit to share. Keeping track of what is proper is difficult when there is so little to go on.

But a name? An actual name? That would give her more to work with.

"Is it now?" It does not sound much like it- but Adelaide pitches her voice low all the same. Red is carrying her after all, it would not do to not humor her in this.

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