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VII. CLOSED.
WHO: Alistair and Sabine
WHAT: Puppy killing in disgrace.
WHEN: At a point in Kingsway.
WHERE: Orlesian wilds!!!
NOTES: No actual killing of puppies, probably.
WHAT: Puppy killing in disgrace.
WHEN: At a point in Kingsway.
WHERE: Orlesian wilds!!!
NOTES: No actual killing of puppies, probably.
[ They'd asked her where she got such a handsome wolf-skin cloak, and she'd told them the truth; that she slew one, mad with red lyrium, in Emprise du Lion. That's how they wind up here.
In woodlands turning golden with the changing of the season. Dry leaves crackle underfoot. There aren't any spikes of red lyrium pushing out from the earth, nor are there any rifts that haven't already been closed, but the presence of overly aggressive, Fade-touched wolves have been reported by numerous travellers. Sabine had taken the task for promise of gold, and she might have even mentioned this reward to Alistair when she recruited his help.
It's becoming cooler as the afternoon begins its retirement. Her cloak staves it off, wearing light leathers beneath, and while she is cautious, and attempting to track the signs of the forest around her, she isn't moving in the way she would if she were hunting prey animals. Likely, there's little point in trying to sneak up on a wolf.
Eventually, Alistair will hear; ]
Alistair.
[ --in such an understated and quiet voice that it's probably like that for a reason.
And he will see her belly down on the forest floor, peering into the open hollow of a fallen log. Without waiting for him to look too or lend advice, she is reaching a gloved hand inside, and when she pulls it back out, she has a fistful of the scruff of a squirming wolf puppy, one that squeaks weakly, dangling and feeble. ]
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--anyway. It isn't a bear. It is a predator, but a very small one.
There is nothing uniquely Fereldan about the way his face goes soft, probably. ]
Oh, good, [ he says, voice sharper than his face. And quiet, to match hers. But there's nothing to be done for the creaking and crunching when he walks closer and crouches beside her. ] Dinner.
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[ A bear, maybe. A hawk, even, with how small these seem to be. She reverses a little to pull herself upright into a kneel on the forest floor, holding the cub with a firm fist at its scruff and the other hand, open palmed, catching its tiny paws in semi-support.
Her face isn't soft, or at least, she wouldn't admit to it. She offers the one in her hands for Alistair to take before ducking and retrieving the others, only two more in total, with the last barely moving. ]
Do they seem possessed by demons to you?
[ Does this count???
Probably not. Placing the livelier of the two she just rescued from their otherwise safe and warm sanctuary in the hollow log on the ground in front of her, she inspects the quieter. She isn't exactly an expert on dogs of any kind, so sort of just feels its little paws, judges its warmth with the flat of her hand against its pink belly, touches its nose with the tip of a gloved finger. ]
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[ He only looks at the cub that's delivered into his hands for a moment before he tucks it against his neck for safekeeping. Warmth-keeping. Half of his face scrunches up--resisting being tickled--while it snuffles and roots, but after a few seconds it settles. ]
Hunger demons, [ he amends, watching Sabine's hands while she evaluates the other one. He follows the corkscrew of a curl up to her face and is not overly quick--confident in her distraction--about looking back down. But he does do that. Look back down.
Despite all efforts to pretend to have a stable hand's pragmatism about animals (dogs belong outside, things die sometimes, often after they die they are edible) he is in fact a sucker, a sucker who's pinching his cub-free hand between his elbow and rubs to pull it free of the glove, a sucker who's melting snow in his bare fist so he can stick a wetted finger against the little one's muzzle and see if it's up for attempting to suckle. ]
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That she is wearing the skin of a bigger, deader version of them is not lost on her. ]
In the first house I worked, I remember, a starling flew into the window of a bedroom that belonged to their littlest, [ she says, conversationally, maybe putting off trying to decide what the hell to do with some abandoned wolf babies. She tips her head a little as one paws at her hair. ] She kept it in a box and didn't tell anyone, but showed me, finally. She had been trying to feed it bits of cheese and cake crumbs, but I convinced her it would have a better life outside. It was lame, you know.
[ Another tip of her head describes how that story ended. ]
The little mistress likely believed she had saved it. Perhaps she clings to that kindness. [ A beat, then; ] The camp is not far. Perhaps there is something to be done for them.
oh my god brooklyn
(this is the only way I can say it right now)
you're welcome!!!
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[ Alistair listens to most of that story with his eyes narrowed and an uncertain smile tugging at one corner of his mouth--not sure what to do with dead birds and hopeless causes, at the moment, with a squeaking lost cause held against his neck.
But with a slight reangling it's also a story about being gentle with the feelings of little girls, even spoiled ones you have to call mistress. A mercy that might have mattered more.
That is probably not the point. There probably is no point. Regardless, it makes the other side of his mouth tug, too, so he has to do some twitchy straining and twisting with his mouth to make it stop. The little one trying to nest into Sabine's hair doesn't help at all. ]
Maybe-- [ starts off as only doubtful agreement, but before the word is finished he finds a reason to sound a little more optimistic, with barely a pause ] --someone's dog has whelped recently and we can slide them in. That's what they did with me.
[ This is an even more egregious lie than it used to be, but he doesn't bat an eye or miss a beat. He's busy lifting the puppy away from his neck to check its half-opened eyes for alertness. ]
Otherwise, [ he tells it, verging on baby-talk, while its little nose twitches and works the air, ] you're probably glove lining. Just look at her. Heartless.
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It would be a fiercer smile without a puppy paw planted against her cheek.
Both puppies hefted in her arms, Sabine stands, although she is quick to renegotiate one of them into Alistair's. Back the way they came, then, not precisely empty handed, but probably the opposite of what they had set out to do. ]
Kind of you, [ she says, ] to give me such an easy joke. But I have seen enough of Ferelden to know that there people are not actually raised by their dogs.
[ She tips her wolf puppy a little to concede-- ]
Perhaps educated by them.
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I, [ Alistair begins with loftiness that suggests she may not be wrong about other Fereldans, ] was educated by the Chantry. [ A beat, during which he hitches up a cub where it's slipping sideways against his shoulder. ] But I would have rather stayed with the dogs. They let me eat with my hands. They were very proud, in fact--your puppies know seven commands, but ours has opposable thumbs.
[ His mimicry of his imaginary dog-parent's voice comes complete with barky gruffness. That might be too much. Once it's out of his mouth he glances sideways to check for impatience, reflexively, but he's also reflexively opposed to being caught trying to read an audience, so it's too quick and furtive a glance to actually register her expression.
His own verdict is that he should clear his throat, between crunching footsteps, and try talking like a normal person. ]
It's not the most outrageous thing, though, is it? In Orlais children are raised and educated by Orlesians.
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[ It may or may not be to his credit that talking in a gruff dog voice is around what she expects out of him. In his quick glance, he doesn't see the raised eyebrow, the subtle shake of her hair that barely disrupts her curls, but he will feel the back of her knuckles bounce off his arm in a customary backhanded gesture in the midst of her admonishment. ]
Are we? [ is the kind of sarcasm that isn't trying very hard to disguise itself, unlike the sarcasm in her initial quip back. ] I thought we were born this way, along with our masks and our petticoats. Just ask the Inquisition.
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Heretics, [ he says dismissively, of the Inquisition. There are several things he could say, such as expounding on how messy that sounds, based on his limited knowledge of childbirth. Fortunately he swerves another way, with a longer sideways look that straddles the line between smirky and sincere. ] If you were all born this way I'd give up Ferelden altogether. Amél-io-rer mon accent.
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Ah well, [ she says, ] then I would have to find ways to ensure you do not regret your treachery.
[ But perhaps that hedges too closely to-- something. Whatever it is she finds herself only joking about when Alistair is right there and digging in her heels about when he is not. She takes the opportunity to speed up a step so as to climb up over a felled log first, going carefully with the animal in her hands. ]
Like fucking, [ she says, over a shoulder, just in case anyone ever accuses her of coy. ]
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Sabine is their only hope. And what well-placed hope it is.
His open mouth stays open for a moment while all the air he'd been planning to make words instead escapes in a soundless stream of vapor. But he doesn't drop the cubs to their deaths! And he doesn't fall down and crush them, also to their deaths. And he doesn't give into the urge to cover the cubs' innocent ears with his hands, so. Fuck you, he's doing great. ]
Well.
[ Probably he should keep walking. Probably he should not permit or encourage Sabine to leave him behind in the cold with puppies and never speak to him again. He stalls a moment by considering the log, then gracefully follows after her by sitting down on it and swinging his legs around for minimal puppy-crushing risk.
Then, still flat-voweled but otherwise improved over his usual awkwardly-careful faltering, and very far from the intentional butchering he inflicts on Orlesians he doesn't want to ever see naked, he adds: ]
Si tel est le cas.
later.
They are warm in a basket that's been lined in sheepskin, having been inspected for any excess demonhood by a mage. As night crawls to its full inky potential, the camp settles in, and by morning, Sabine will have to choose between travelling back for Halamshiral and its Inquisition presence, or following the trail all the way back to Skyhold. A decision that can wait until morning.
There are more decisions left still to make, after all. Like now, while she sits on the ground, her back slouched against the heavy log that had been dragged towards one of the several firepits dotting around the Inquisition camp. Long legs stretched out before her, crossed at the ankle, watching more the sparks that gust up from the flames than the stars even further up above them and partially shrouded in cloud.
The meagre light of her shard is only just visible, glimmering out from her sleeve.
She slides a glance towards where Alistair is sitting, and spies the recognisable band of wooden beads knotted around his wrist. After a considering pause, she reaches out through the space between them, and slides a slim finger between his wrist and the tension of leather. It would be easy to snap, if you're fast enough.
The tension pulled taut, the tug, isn't looking to do so. ]
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Or else. Sabine tugs the bracelet on his wrist and he looks down at it, very briefly shocked that he even has a wrist, where did that come from, before he's likewise tugged out of his trance.
Alistair lifts up with his feet and untugged hand and moves over, angled so she can have the hand she beckoned, if she wants it. And the attached forearm. And the shoulder. But she can't have the bracelet. He says as much: ]
You can't have it back. [ A beat, and he recycles an explanation he's used before. ] It makes me feel pretty.
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[ --because a good way to make clear your interests is to insult someone's looks, however sardonic, but Sabine doesn't quite reflect on this as she considers the bracelet before finally his face. How had she described it, to Zevran? That a human man, a shemlen, were wolves to her. Things to be hunted, or be hunted by, or to hide from. That to be attracted to one was the same as being attracted to a suit of armour, with only emptiness within.
The grip on the bracelet transitions into a gentle circled hold around his wrist. Hand claimed, she brings it up to nudge his palm against her bare throat, up along the side. Not her face, or somewhere even more forward, but where her heart strikes cords strong enough to thrum gently at her pulse.
Her hand smooths over his knuckles to both lay his hand flat and also relinquish dominion over hands back to him. ]
You may keep it, [ she decides. ]
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But it's too late. He gives up and lets it happen, with an added sheepish smile. ] Thank you.
[ She's brought them this far. He could let her take them the rest of the way. And then throw himself in the fire. He moves his thumb to her jawline and his face close enough to touch. Noses first. There's time and space to turn away or bite him in self-defense. ]