WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin + assorted. WHAT: Sad elfblooded in snow. WHEN: Early Harvestmere. WHERE: Skyhold. NOTES: References to death; likely also to infidelity, substance abuse, general mental instability. Starters in the comments.
"Lady Vauquellin." If he sounds surprised to see her, it's because he is surprised to see her. Surprised, but not upset. Though he can't help but notice the lack of exuberance about her today. The puppy is also new. "And guest." He'll get to that later.
Cullen has, since the last time she saw his office, gained a chair. Not a chair for himself. It sits in the corner, not covered in debris, and is a chair for a guest. For someone to sit quietly in and take comfort in the assurance that the Commander has the authority to throw anyone out of his office. It makes it an ideal place to hide, if one is so inclined. It's to this chair that he attempts to usher her once he clears his desk.
"His name is Hardie," she says, too caught off-guard by suddenly being moved to protest it and sitting in the chair before she quite knows why or what just happened. "You're Fereldan, you know things about dogs - I don't know anything about dogs."
The general care and feeding thereof she is picking up; and there are servants, it isn't as if Hardie's entirely reliant on her and her inconsistent schedule. But there are other things that need to be addressed, or attended to, or learned -
He's still small, which seems to her like a good time to make sure he can be taught who not to growl at because they're friends. (Or - more than friends, in particular cases she's thinking of.)
Cullen looks thoughtful when she tells him the dog's name. It's been a while, but the loss of a friend is not something a person just gets over. Cullen only knew the man briefly, and he still feels grief at the loss - not crippling, or even inhibiting, but it is there. If Gwen was close enough to the man to name her dog after him. Why now, though? No.
He kneels next to the chair, putting himself eye level with the puppy and removing one of his gloves to let it smell his bare skin. "They aren't overly complicated creatures. He's beautiful."
"Thranduil gave him to me." It occurs to her that she doesn't know if he knows who that is; elaborates a moment later, "The very big foreign elf."
(Which is probably not how he'd prefer to be described, though he might be prepared to be philosophical about it as it's certainly not the worst of all possible ways Gwenaëlle, specifically, might have described him to someone.)
"He said it would make him feel better if I had a guard dog." Hardie, sniffing Cullen's hand with interest, moving cautiously after having already learned the lesson that his mistress's voluminous skirts could appear deceptively firm and prove to have nothing but air beneath them, does not look like he'll be replacing Yngvi at her door immediately. He does, however, have the promise of being a much larger dog fully grown. "I thought I should find out how to teach him who I don't need guarded from. While he's still little."
(If she just doesn't acknowledge or talk about the sad elephant in the room, maybe he won't notice. That's definitely how this works, and not desperately wishful thinking.)
The puppy's paws are, indeed, being inspected. He'll be large. Not mabari large, but more than large enough to be a problem if he's not properly trained. "The best thing you can do? Don't teach him to react only to the people who come to see you, teach him to react to your mood. If you feel safe, he should be calm. If you feel threatened, he should be defensive." A person could put Gwen at ease one day, and make her feel unsafe the next. A good guard dog should not automatically assume anyone is safe. Every interaction should be an assessment.
Asher could have helped her with all of this, if he were here. He knew about dogs, too, he had Bronson - he would have been who she'd gone to for help with her shard, too, instead of Alistair. Clinging to one grief to avoid another isn't really helping, but it's there, still, so why not? One after another.
It's hard not to think who might be next.
"How do I do that?" after a moment, scratching Hardie absently behind his ears. "He does learn well. He knows some things already - he's housebroken and he'll sit and stay and heel. And he answers to some foreign elf word, but I think he knows his name, too." Hû, the Sindarin word for dog; Gwenaëlle, predictably, had discarded that immediately in favour of giving him a name that isn't some elf nonsense.
"Training dogs with other dogs helps. You can come with me the next time I take Puppy out." If she feels up to going outside. She looks awful. Truly. Not unattractive, but awful in a more thorough way. Deflated. Diminished. "Sit and stay and heel are all good. You should teach him to relieve himself on command, too. It'll probably be helpful down the line. Simple things. The closer you two become, the more easily he'll react to your moods."
Cullen still has one of those big clumsy looking paws in his hand, and he's rubbing along the pads, trying to keep Hardie calm. "What's happened, Gwen?" This isn't really about a dog, surely.
It's a reflex; she says it as instinctively and easily as Cullen might draw his sword at a threat, which is. Not an irrelevant comparison, when her shoulders draw in just a little at the question, like it is a threat, somehow. It isn't that she's afraid of him, or uncomfortable with him - it isn't him at all, only a learned response to something inside of her.
It takes her a moment to remember what Morrigan had said, and say, "I think I'm tired of traveling."
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Cullen has, since the last time she saw his office, gained a chair. Not a chair for himself. It sits in the corner, not covered in debris, and is a chair for a guest. For someone to sit quietly in and take comfort in the assurance that the Commander has the authority to throw anyone out of his office. It makes it an ideal place to hide, if one is so inclined. It's to this chair that he attempts to usher her once he clears his desk.
no subject
The general care and feeding thereof she is picking up; and there are servants, it isn't as if Hardie's entirely reliant on her and her inconsistent schedule. But there are other things that need to be addressed, or attended to, or learned -
He's still small, which seems to her like a good time to make sure he can be taught who not to growl at because they're friends. (Or - more than friends, in particular cases she's thinking of.)
no subject
He kneels next to the chair, putting himself eye level with the puppy and removing one of his gloves to let it smell his bare skin. "They aren't overly complicated creatures. He's beautiful."
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(Which is probably not how he'd prefer to be described, though he might be prepared to be philosophical about it as it's certainly not the worst of all possible ways Gwenaëlle, specifically, might have described him to someone.)
"He said it would make him feel better if I had a guard dog." Hardie, sniffing Cullen's hand with interest, moving cautiously after having already learned the lesson that his mistress's voluminous skirts could appear deceptively firm and prove to have nothing but air beneath them, does not look like he'll be replacing Yngvi at her door immediately. He does, however, have the promise of being a much larger dog fully grown. "I thought I should find out how to teach him who I don't need guarded from. While he's still little."
(If she just doesn't acknowledge or talk about the sad elephant in the room, maybe he won't notice. That's definitely how this works, and not desperately wishful thinking.)
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It's hard not to think who might be next.
"How do I do that?" after a moment, scratching Hardie absently behind his ears. "He does learn well. He knows some things already - he's housebroken and he'll sit and stay and heel. And he answers to some foreign elf word, but I think he knows his name, too." Hû, the Sindarin word for dog; Gwenaëlle, predictably, had discarded that immediately in favour of giving him a name that isn't some elf nonsense.
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Cullen still has one of those big clumsy looking paws in his hand, and he's rubbing along the pads, trying to keep Hardie calm. "What's happened, Gwen?" This isn't really about a dog, surely.
no subject
It's a reflex; she says it as instinctively and easily as Cullen might draw his sword at a threat, which is. Not an irrelevant comparison, when her shoulders draw in just a little at the question, like it is a threat, somehow. It isn't that she's afraid of him, or uncomfortable with him - it isn't him at all, only a learned response to something inside of her.
It takes her a moment to remember what Morrigan had said, and say, "I think I'm tired of traveling."
Someone seems to die every time she does it.