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

[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.