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Entry tags:
(open) here is a list of lies they told you
WHO: Clarke + You
WHAT: Runs through field with CR-catching net
WHEN: Solace 1-12
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Feel free to PM me here or on Plurk if you want a specific starter or to discuss something!
WHAT: Runs through field with CR-catching net
WHEN: Solace 1-12
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Feel free to PM me here or on Plurk if you want a specific starter or to discuss something!
i. training grounds
There's still something untrained and unpolished about the way Clarke holds her scavenged staff, but she's improving. She's learning the fluid twirls and arcs that Dorian Pavus espouses instead of the utilitarian jabs and swings she picked up in the mountains out of self-taught necessity. An older enchanter, one who fought the war beginning to end, has been helping her marshal her broad waves of fire into something more artful and easy to aim. She's coming very close to looking like someone who wasn't thrust headlong into a war before ever holding a staff in a Circle--but not quite there, and still happy to take advice or to stop for a while, leaning on her staff, to watch someone more skilled.
Sometimes now there's a puppy with her (because this is Dragon Age: Adorable Dogs)--a wolfish little thing saved from looking wild mainly by its bright orange coloring, the kind that could only come from carefully nurtured recessive traits, probably Orlesian. Clarke tries tying her out of the way, but she's determined. She slips backwards out of her rope collar, or chews on the knot of her lead until it comes loose, and scampers across the training field with no care for the danger. Half the time Clarke ties her directly back up, speaking sternly, despite the fact she's not as clever as a mabari and can't understand. The other half of the time, Clarke sits down on the ground for a while, defeated, and lets the puppy chew on one of the straps hanging off of her leather coat.
ii. healing tents
Clarke isn't really a healer--certainly not a spirit healer, but also not even a real healer by the lower standards of creation magic. In the field, she's 's moderately useful. She can help close wounds; she can make a poultice. Other people can do both better, though, especially here, with tools and time.
But she's often found hanging around the healing tents anyway, doing what she can to help: holding people down and still while someone else works on their wounds, fetching things, dabbing foreheads, cleaning up messes, grinding elfroot. She watches the healers and surgeons carefully, but she doesn't ask them to teach her anything. It's not a learning experience. It's penance.
When it's quiet and she isn't needed--if she doesn't leave--she sits next to the fire with a blank book and pencils. She no phenomenal artist; she's eighteen, and she pursues realism over style, laying out diagrams of anatomy alongside doodles of herbs and landscapes from memory. But she's pretty good, and pretty engrossed, unless someone comes close enough for her to raise her head and look a little guilty for--something. Taking a break. Having a hobby that doesn't help anyone. Something.
iii. wildcard
for gwen & later lexa
Most people here are. To some degree or another. The public baths built into the springs beneath Skyhold are, as the name implies, public, and carting water elsewhere is more work than the modesty of many is worth. But Clake is also young, and female, and she's placed herself as far in the springs as she can get from the odd cluster of soldiers, as much to avoid being talked to as to avoid being looked at, which perhaps lessens the hypocrisy just a little when she looks at someone else who enters.
For the first moment she's up to her chin in the water, slouched down to let her considerable amount of hair soak and drift around. By the second moment she's straightened up, on her rocky approximation of a bench. It's something like an invitation.
no subject
The Inquisition is all soldiers and assassins and ... you know, what not. People like that. People who have scars. No one cares about that, no one comments, it's - it's something that she can get used to, as well. Every time she comes down here and no one notices or cares, that's -
- not what is happening, right now, exactly. On the other hand, Gwenaëlle knows all about being looked at, and there are...different kinds. Of that. She doesn't recognise the girl who straightens while she walks - maybe a little, maybe she's familiar, Skyhold is large and people pass one another by all the time - but that just means that when she sheds her robe at the side of the spring to slide down beside her she can say,
"I thought if I sat down you might not get a crick in your neck." From the looking. The gratifying, stupid-rage-demon-didn't-make-her-less-pretty looking that she probably wouldn't have rewarded with her company if it had come from a less equally appealing source.
no subject
Clarke should probably say so.
She says, "That's kind of you."
The pause and the brevity aren't quite awkward. Taciturn--because she's young, she's interested, she's operating from a baseline of constant incurable sadness, she isn't used to having to say much--though the lift of her eyebrows and spark of humor in her eyes are decently eloquent in their way.
But not too eloquent. She still has to use her mouth to say, "What's your name?"
Manners. She's a Marcher and a rebel, only recently divested of a week's worth of grime and not so devoted to cleaning her hair that she's undone any of the braids threaded through it, but she's at least that polite.
no subject
"Gwenaëlle," she says. There's a pause, and then she repeats it again, slower, but doesn't actually wait to see if Clarke will or if she can pronounce it without the help - she gestures to the bag she brought down with her and tilts her eyebrows inquiringly. "I have a comb. Would you mind if I...? While we get acquainted."
The hair really does need to be dealt with, and in her experience, framing these sort of things as an excuse to touch each other is much more successful method of making it happen than 'have you considered being less gross'.
II
It's why she occasionally takes a break from her work in the kitchens to come down here and make sure those who are too ill or injured (or too busy or stubborn) to make the trek themselves still get proper meals. Honestly, she sometimes questions how much good she can actually do in Skyhold, but she has her own reasons for trying, and in cases like this at least she's glad there's something this clear and tangibly helpful she can manage.
Not that she looks glad, mind you. Avery's typical look of mild consternation is still firmly in place as she pours out bowls of soup for patients and healers alike, though it's entirely possible Clarke barely notices she's there... until she's standing directly over her, that is.
"Here," she says simply, holding a bowl out in her direction. "Eat up."
no subject
She looks up. She looks confused. Anyone who's ever really gotten away with looking after Clarke, instead of being looked after by her, has been at least 35 years old.
"I'm not a patient," she says, in case that wasn't obvious.
no subject
1.
"I hear congratulations are in order. You were an alarming adversary with snow to hand, rumours say."
no subject
"I guess," she says, accepting the skin. She doesn't stand back up--she doesn't think Leliana would want her to--but she does move onto her knees. It seems more polite. "I don't know how good I was with the snow, but I hid a lot of flags in my shirt."
A pause.
"How are you feeling?"
The answer obviously fine, or some variation on it. Clarke has enough in common with the spymaster to know that she wouldn't be out here if she weren't capable of telling people she was all right and, if not fully convincing anyone, at least not leaving room for argument. But it's not just a polite question, either; she'd been worried.
no subject
The question, though, makes her look back to Clarke, and she considers the ground with a cursory glance, debating sitting before opting not to be presumptuous. Clarke is hard at work, and perhaps more in need of reprieve than company. The company is more an indulgence for Leliana, she suspects, and with that in mind it hardly seems proper to claim a spot.
"I am well, thank you." That is not the entire answer, and so she elaborates. "My health progresses each day. I am told if I acquire a number more nugs it will advance my recovery all the more hastily."
And just the faintest hint of a smile, with that, before her expression is schooled once more.
II
Anders turns to wash his hands and offers another cloth to her when done. "He'll be out for three to four hours at least, so we've a break now. Unless you wanted to sit on him to make certain he's staying put."
no subject
no subject
"I wasn't... I wasn't being serious. And I believe we'll pass on that idea." Not everyone has the same baggage as him, but he can't imagine that going well with even the healthiest of people. "No offense. We'll let him rest, and if we truly want to spook him we'll make faces when he comes around. How does that sound?"
His heart rate is even going a little fast at the way the blanket would feel.
i
At the end of the day, however, he's as Fereldan as they come, and dogs are like a beloved port in the storm. She's spending time with the odd coloured pup, little teeth chewing, and he approaches with his own faithful companion at his side. The poodle moves from one paw to the other with excited energy but stays glued to his hip nonetheless.
"How old, do you know? The little one will need plenty of firm training soon enough if you want to bring it out into the field with you."