Take me to the water's edge [open]

[provenforce]

WHO: Rey and YOU
WHAT: Stuff Rey is doing for the month of Harvestmere
WHEN: ~whenever~
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: if you'd like a closed starter hit me up on plurk, or pm!

i. riverside

Rey can be found often standing on the river bank, a little ways away from the camp, where she thinks no one will see her. Even after her lessons have concluded for the day with Obi-Wan she'll come here to keep practising, picking rocks up from the riverbank using nothing but the Force, then throwing them out into the water.

Sometimes she sees if she can find the same rock and pull it back, other times she'll try to angle a smooth stone, perfect for skipping, just to see if she can skip it with her will alone. And sometimes she'll get frustrated with that and just actually physically skip stones, something she learned to do in the water troughs at the edge of Niima outpost when she was young.


ii. tower

Sleeping in the barracks was something that Rey wasn't quite comfortable with, too many bodies, too many people she doesn't know well enough to trust letting her guard down around. So for a while she'd taken to sleeping in nooks and crannies around the castle, wherever she could tuck herself to avoid getting trampled on or spotted. Finally she found herself a room that looked unoccupied, possibly due to the massive hole in the wall facing the valley. Rey is however something of an expert in patching up sad hovels into something liveable. She hung a heavy wool blanket across the hole, and added some nails she acquired to pin it into place when night fell and the wind blew.

Anyone who happens into the tower her room is located in, whether looking for her or not, may find her with tools spread out on the floor as she attempts to install a locking mechanism into the door. She doesn't own much, certainly nothing anyone would want to steal, but a lock will make her feel more at ease at night.


iii. hot springs

Rey can count on one hand the number of times she's used a bath with actual water. On Jakku every drop was precious and needed more for hydration than the luxury of cleaning oneself. Sonic showers were the norm, and even those had been fairly infrequent. She'd had a real shower before leaving to try and track Luke Skywalker down, it had felt bizarre to waste water in such a way.

Standing looking at the hot springs now, she still feels that way. All the same she needs to get clean, and she knows this is the best option, the other being the freezing river. She's getting better at tolerating the cold, but she does still have her limits. This isn't her first time here, but she's still unaccustomed to the concept, so it's late at night when she's less likely to run into someone else. With a little puttering she puts her things aside, before making her way into the water, letting out a sigh as the heat seeps into her skin. It's the closest she's gotten to the Jakku heat since arriving in Thedas, and strange as it is, it's not unwelcome.

After soaking it in for a few moments she sets to the task of letting her hair down, wanting to be in and out in as short amount of time as absolutely possible.

Comments

[provenforce]

Rey can't help but smile at the pleased sounds coming from the nug in her arms and without really thinking about it she starts petting him. She didn't interact much with animals on Jakku, most of them wanted to eat her, but the instinct to cuddle something cute is apparently very alive within her.

"People race them?" She sounds astounded by the concept of these little creatures being bet on with a crowd surrounding them, but also curious. There's so much about this world that is unique and interesting, even if the technology leaves much to be desired. "Is that what they're bred for?"

[inagutterson]

Humans - elves don't really have the money and most of the grey folks Yngvi knows have been trying to murder him or in the same line of business as him so not inclined to owning small things and dwarves have their own sort of relationships with nugs - have always been an easy sell. Maybe that's what a human baby is like. All wrinkled and bald and weird looking. Yngvi would not be surprised. It makes a lot of sense why they keep them then get offended if you suggest eating them when times are hard.

"Up here you race them, surface dwarves know what we're doing because we're not so serious we can't take a piss without consulting everyone if it's allowed. Good thing to know if you ever have to go to Orzammar. But you shouldn't, it's terrible. Ale that comes from there is like if you brewed up an unwashed armpit. Down there it's food mostly but that's because they'll eat anything, even the poor. Most especially the poor. Oh and the hide. Makes good armour. I named all mine after food for the journey to give them motivation to keep running."

He is a good nug dad.

[provenforce]

A lot of that goes over Rey's head. Orzammar, surface dwarves, it's all stuff she's fairly uneducated in. Yngvi is the first dwarf she's actually run into. Still, at least some of it she clues into and she smirks a little as he explains why he named them, crouching down so she can put the nug in her arms down with his companions, but remaining in that position, greeting the other nugs with light touches.

"Do they understand you, or is that just wishful thinking on your part that the names will motivate them?" It sounds like something that would happen on Jakku. Likely did, for all she knew. There were fights of some kind or another, those who managed to avoid being scavengers pitted animals against each-other. She'd never had the money or the interest to look into it further than hearing it mentioned from time to time.

[inagutterson]

So that his favourite (he's gone so soft but okay, he's still pretty much in mourning, you can't lose one of your best friends and not need things to fill up that space) doesn't miss out, he puts him down too, hopping back so they've got room to move about. At least everyone he bought nugs from reared them right, but you never take a nug with a bad temper, what good does that do anyone? The happy noises are relaxing though, it's why he's kept this lot around instead of unleashing them.

(Skyhold he's not sorry about your feral nug problem, he doesn't know he can't read suddenly.)

"Oh they know. There's a nug king down in the Deep Roads." Shockingly that isn't the part Yngvi's making up. "They didn't understand anything else I said to them to get them moving, not one thing. It was sad. But then I started calling that one," he indicates the chunkiest of the nugs, "Rump Roast and suddenly he started thundering along like there was a bear after him. To be fair there was a drunk Orlesian man firing a crossbow at me."