OPEN | The daylight is almost gone

[mythalenaste]

WHO: Pel and YOU
WHAT: November/Firstfall open post
WHEN: Throughout Firstfall
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: Pel has near-constant morning sickness, so if you are squicked by vomit, let me know somehow and I'll spare you.

I

Knitting is a refuge, though it is a trying task as Pel's hand heals. Healers have carefully arranged the bones at each healing, but there is still a great deal of stiffness in her right hand. It makes knitting a slow and imprecise effort. Right now, it's a baby blanket, made of the softest wool she has. The pattern is popcorn, little buds covering every centimeter to make the blanket thicker and warmer.

She can also be found at her regular job during the day, in the library, thoughtfully twirling a pen between her fingers as she studies some ancient text.

At night, she can be found on the battlements, facing the sunset and sending up a quiet prayer.

II

There are some days when Pel is hunched over her desk in the library, cheek against the surface waiting for nausea to lessen.

Some days she doesn't get out of bed.

There is one night when she walks into the tavern from her room above, her face covered with her neck handkerchief and eyes watering. She dashes to the far end of the room, picks up a plate with an abandoned half-eaten boiled egg on it, and flings the egg as far out the window as she can manage, even using some magic to make it go as far as possible. Face still covered like she is entering the sulfur pits of the Western Approach, she runs to the other side of the room, then the top of the first flight of stairs, before at last daring to breathe, suppressing a gag amidst her gasps.

Wildcard

Comments

I

[byblow]

While she's in the library twirling her pin, Alistair plonks down across from her at her table, several books in hand.

He isn't fond of libraries. It has nothing to do with the books, despite what he might say, and everything to do with having to be quiet and still and feeling like people are watching, waiting for him to step out of line, so they can tell him to leave. But he needs the books. So hello. He smiles at Pel, wiggles one hand (books included) in greeting, and says, "I won't bother you." Quietly. He's trying.

The effort gets him through a whole minute of silently, quickly scanning pages of ancient Nevarran history before he tries tipping his chair back onto its back legs, still reading while he searches for equilibrium. It isn't until he thinks he's found it that he looks up at Pel, clears his throat and raises his eyebrows, holding onto the table's edge with few enough fingers to make his intent clear—does she dare him?

[mythalenaste]

That gets a flat look.

"Alistair," she says loudly, breaking the typical library hush. "You're a thirty-year-old man. I'm not going to tell you whether or not you should tip your chair back at the table."

[byblow]

He flattens his chair abruptly, wood legs making sharp clapping sounds against the stone, and gives her a disgruntled look. "Fine." He folds his arms back behind the back of the chair and tries to hold still, face a pantomime of somber maturity.

A few second pass.

Out of the corner of his mouth, like he's trying not to be caught talking, he says, "You know Beleth well, right?" Of course she does.

[mythalenaste]

"I'd say well enough." Mostly lately. Before, Pel wasn't encouraged to bond with the other children, which translated into their adult lives as peaceful but mostly silence coexistence. Only after joining the Inquisition did Pel and Beleth start really talking. But she supposes she knows Beleth better than most people, by virtue of having technically grown up with her.

[byblow]

Well enough is well enough for Alistair to hum a little, considering, then ask, "Has she said anything about me and--things?"

[mythalenaste]

"Not to me." About Alistair and things? Alistair doesn't often ask what other people say of him--he lacks the ego for it. Pel looks up and squints at him. "Why?"

[byblow]

"No reason," he says, tapping his fingers on his book -- hiding something, obviously, and he knows it's obvious, but Beleth does warrant at least that token effort to protect her feelings. That much effort, and then he cracks. "She asked me... I don't know what she was asking me. She likes me. Or she did until I made her cry saying no to her. I don't know."

He finishes off his finger drumming by flattening his whole hand down on the page.

"I hoped you knew how she was."

[mythalenaste]

It's a bit before Pel responds to the news. Her expression switches to careful neutrality and her gaze goes back to her work, covering her surprise. And, in the ensuing seconds, a keen sense of betrayal that Alistair doesn't need to know about when he has his own thing going on.

"She wouldn't have mentioned that to me, no," she answers evenly. Unless she has absolutely no self-awareness, she might add, if Alistair knew what Beleth had said to her on learning she was pregnant. "But she's sturdier than she looks. And you did nothing wrong. Right?"

Alistair can put his foot in his mouth, but he wouldn't be deliberately cruel about this.

[byblow]

"I don't know," he says again. He glances up again -- not oblivious to something being a little bit off, but not able to place it, either, so he lets it pass. "I told her she probably shouldn't have wound herself up so much about it and she snapped at me. But I was only trying to make her feel better. No one needs to be nervous about me."

He hates all of this a lot.

"It's been a while. I'm sure she's over me, really, but." He rubs his shoulder awkwardly. "I'm sort of seeing someone. I don't want to make it worse." A beat. "Not that you can do anything about it. Didn't I say I wasn't going to bother you? I think I said that. Silly me."

[mythalenaste]

Pel shakes her head softly. "Then all you did was exercise your right to say no to a relationship you didn't want. She'll realize that, and she'll be fine."

But she has to steer away from Beleth, or she'll start to get angry. "Now. Tell me about this someone you're sort of seeing."

[byblow]

"Oh," Alistair says, while he turns a little pink and smiles a little involuntarily. "Sabine--?" With a questioning lilt because maybe they know one another. "She's funny."

[mythalenaste]

Pel immediately goes somber with thought. She appears to be somewhere else, for a moment.

"She's...important." It's the word that comes to mind, at any rate. "I asked her to show me an alienage. She...opened my eyes, to some things. Made me think differently about the world. I like her. I hope she makes you happy. I'm hard-pressed to think of two better people than you both."

[byblow]

That puts his funny to shame. He ducks his head at the compliment and makes a shy sort of scoffing noise, but he doesn't argue or conjure up a joke, which is either progress in his manners or mere unwillingness to knock Sabine off that pedestal in his haste to get off it himself.

The most likely outcome, he nearly says, is that she'll break his heart, but that's better than breaking hers, so--

"Do you have your eye on anyone?" he asks instead. Blackwall is gone again and, also, obviously undeserving. "I suppose being ill so much--" He's noticed. "--can't help."

[mythalenaste]

"No." A flash of a smile. "I'm giving up, for now. Everything changed when I found out about the baby. I think I'd always wanted someone so I could start a family, but I've skipped past that entirely. Now I'm just. Gestating. Setting my life up to be what it must be to raise a child. Friends are more important than fathers, right now."

[byblow]

"Well," Alistair says, giving her a gentle and companionable kick under the table, "maybe not looking will make it easier. Someone could take you by surprise, especially now you're--glowing."

And cleavagey. But he isn't going to say.

[mythalenaste]

"That's sweat from throwing up, Alistair. And I'm pretty sure nobody's going to want a thing to do with a pregnant woman. Unless they're like me and want a head start on having children."

A huff. "And I'm not looking at humans anymore, either, so that narrows the field even more. No Blackwall, no James, just elves from here on."

[byblow]

"You should make sure you begin by telling every new elf you meet that you're sweaty from throwing up," Alistair advises, because that's the only thing he feels at all entitled to comment on. If he were an elf he'd probably not want to bother with humans either.