faderift | [ Open ] You are a Giant Redwood, Falling on a Family of Deer

WHO: Avery and OPEN
WHAT: Another post-shardbearer-plot (this one) post! This one a slightly wider spread catch-all
WHEN: Late September/early October
WHERE: Around Skyhold
NOTES: Warning for grouchy, injured baker! Also, potential references to violence and torture and gore from said shardbearer plot

Kitchens

Anyone coming in for a visit or just down here passing by over these few weeks is probably going to be hearing a lot more banging and clattering and cursing than usual before they even reach the doors. Sounds which further investigation will reveal to be the sweet music of a very frustrated Avery trying to navigate the narrow spaces between counters in here sporting a sling on one arm and a crutch under the other. What with her junked-up shoulder and still heavily bandaged leg, y'know?

If they're lucky, they might even get the pleasure of seeing her fumble at doing simple tasks one-handed or knock over a tray of breadrolls with her crutch and transcend anger into a quantum state of silent fuming. The kitchen has never betrayed her like this before.

Healing Tents

Hopefully it won't be like that for too much longer though. And it's this hope that has Avery diligently visiting the healing tents at the appropriate intervals to have the progress of her wounds checked on. The shoulder, thankfully, is not so bad, as long as she makes sure to keep from moving it around too much for a while, but the leg... Well, it turns out giant, magical wolf bites don't really give a damn about magical healing. They're stubborn like that and refuse to go away on anyone's schedule but their own!

Stables

During those moments when Avery doesn't have reason to visit the healing tents but has been shooed out of the kitchen to do this thing called... relaxing? (She thinks she might have heard of it once, but she really has no idea what such a strange and foreign concept could truly be. It sounds like a trap.) She usually wanders down to the stables to check in with some of her favorite horses and maybe have a go at brushing out their manes and tails while she's at it. Hopefully without being disturbed by anyone, but everyone knows how likely that is to work out for her.

Training Grounds

Though lately she's been spending a little time watching the soldiers train as well. She's not a terrible fighter herself, but most of what she knows is about how to make your average bully or mugger eat their own teeth. If she'd had real battle training like these people, would things have gone differently on that last mission? She can't help but wonder about it as she silently observes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a... hesitation before Avery answers, and as she does, she turns away from where Cosima is handling the onion. Eager for something to do with her hands (or, uh, hand?), she grabs the garlic cloves she'd brought over and proceeds to smash and peel them, answering, "Sort of. When I was... nine or so? My mum married a man who owned a bakery. He taught us what he knew. How to help him run it and all that."

"Fair enough." It seems like Avery may not be ... thrilled to expand on that, so Cosima offers, "My dad was a little bit of a health nut, so he cooked a lot so he could control what he was eating. But it was all like ... plain fish fillets and kale salads and shit." She glances over. "You guys have kale? Dark leafy green that tastes bitter as hell but supposed to be good for you?"

She just realized she might never have to have another conversation about 'superfoods' again, which is a small silver lining to this whole situation. (And if Avery would rather roll her eyes at kale than talk about her stepfather... that also made it worth bringing up.)

"Um." Avery pauses what she's doing and looks briefly over to Cosima, confused. "It's not one I've heard of."

But it's not as if she's done a lot of traveling, other than the mission they went on, and there wasn't a whole lot of time for trading recipes on that one, huh?

"Yesss, small victories," Cosima says, grinning a little to herself. "Point is, he ate food because he thought it would keep him healthy, not because it tasted good. So when I got to college, it was, um. Lots of salt and butter."

There's food that isn't mostly salt and butter? What??

"Yeah, what I learned was definitely more about tasting good," she comments after a moment. "You know, since we wanted to sell anything, ever."

"Right? Come on." After a moment, Cosima clarifies, "There's this thing where I'm from. People get really hung up on whether what they eat is good for them, and that didn't come out of nowhere - " she's going to skip a summary of the rise of industrialized food, just trust her - "but it's ended up with people really afraid of a) getting fat, ever and b) accepting the fact that no matter what you eat, you're gonna die some day, you know? Just eat a vegetable now and then, geeze."

While Cosima does have opinions and these are more or less what they are, she also feels she's gone from "not making Avery talk if she doesn't want to" to "desperately filling the silence because there's so much they're not talking about." She isn't quite sure how to stop, though.

Yeah, uh, enjoy this blank stare. It's all she's getting for a while...

"Your home is well odd."

"If it makes you feel better, even other people from my country thought so," she says, but can't help feeling a twinge of homesickness anyway. "In fairness, my country is friggin' huge, so I guess it'd be weirder if we were all the same. And," she adds, "we had fresh avocados, which were great, I am intensely sorry you don't have avocados for your sake as much as mine."

"Which are... what exactly?" she asks after a moment, eyebrow raised.

"Oh! Yeah, so they're fruits, about so big," she makes a loose fist to demonstrate. "The flesh's consistency is kind of like soft butter, and they've got this great, like... mild nutty taste. You can spread them on toast, or put a little salt on them and just eat 'em, or sometimes you mash them up and mix them with diced tomatoes for a dipping sauce."

Cosima smiles, crookedly. "Maybe some will come through a rift one day."

"Maybe," Avery answers with a shrug. "If they come through possessed though, I'm not dealing with them."

"Noted," Cosima says, cheerfully. "As a native of the land where avocados are grown, I suppose it's only fair I deal with the demonic version. Wonder if they'd still taste good."

Apparently her vegetarianism doesn't prohibit demonically animated fruits.

"My luck, they'd probably be gross."

Perhaps frighteningly, she actually pauses to think about it. "Not sure. I mean, I've heard of possessed plants, but I don't remember hearing about anybody eating one."

"Oh my god, of course possessed plants are a real thing." Of course. "I was totally kidding."

"I've never seen one, mind," Avery amends. "So it could just be stories. But I've heard of old forests with possessed trees in, moving about when you're not looking to get you lost and eventually cornered so they can snatch you up."

There's a hint of amusement in her tone, like someone telling a ghost story and hoping for a reaction.

[ Open ] You are a Giant Redwood, Falling on a Family of Deer

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