(open) here is a list of lies they told you

[levered]

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!

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

Comments

for gwen & later lexa

[levered]

She's naked, first of all.

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.

II

[thecookery]

If Clarke is no healer, Avery is even less of one. She hasn't a lick of magic and wouldn't know a surgeon's tools from a hole in the ground. But she does at least remember what it's like to be under a healer's care for an extended stay, that there's more you need than just magic or medicines to recover.

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."

1.

[fightingale]

What with all the, oh, everything that has been happening, Leliana has not had much time for social calls. It is with no small about of guilt that she reflects on her eagerness to offer Clarke aid, and the sad reality that she has not been in a position to check in with her for some time. When she realises that Clarke is training ("realises" is a euphemism for one of her scouts telling her), Leliana descends from her Rookery. It might be good timing, or something rather more dramatic that has her arriving just as Clarke sits down, a water skin in hand that she holds out in offering.

"I hear congratulations are in order. You were an alarming adversary with snow to hand, rumours say."

II

[justice_is_blond]

"Thank you." That patient had been particularly stubborn, though not their fault. Concussions make everything confusing and he can't blame the man for not understanding why he needed to lay down. But a lack of blame hadn't made that any easier. Clarke holding him down had.

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."

i

[tactical_alert]

Malcolm tends to leave mages be to their training. He can train against them, to nullify magical energies or to dodge the attacks, to counter even without opposing magic, but it's not his place to tell mages how to fight.

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."