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[nonsibi]

WHO: Frédérique Durfort-Lacapalette and Bellamy Blake
WHAT: Freddie likes plants. Bellamy is gathering plants for Clarke. their plants get mixed up! oh no! this is a meet cute so later Bellamy can carry Freddie's shopping bags in Kirkwall.
WHEN: Draconis (non darkest timeline, just regular time)
WHERE: outside of Skyhold
NOTES: n/a!

Spindleweed, Clarke had said. It grows by bodies of water, but see if anyone will trade for it first.

Which is how Bellamy has come to be here, kicking rocks into the shallow streambed and crouching down to move aside the hardy greenery that don't match Clarke's hastily-scribbled illustration. As common as spindleweed might be, there isn't exactly a bustling market scene in Skyhold, at least not one bustling enough to stock every herb and plant healers might be interested in.

Truthfully, Bellamy appreciates the mission. His satchel is already stuffed mostly full of the spindleweed, but he's determined to bring back the biggest bounty for Clare to use. He's not good at idleness, and truthfully, if it weren't for Clarke, he'd have gone back to the Frostbacks a long time ago. But Clarke is here, and however much Octavia and the others might need him, Clarke needs him more. And Clarke knows Bellamy--which means the task she's set him might be half-invented, some plant she pretended to need just to give him a sense of purpose. No matter how many times she assured him that the need for the spindleweed was real, he was suspicious of just the opposite.

But he's also out here, looking, because he likes having something to do. Hunting, he's grown better at that, now that the task largely falls to him. Training, sure, for as long as he can stand the other Templars and pretend at a kind of cooperative camaraderie that he doesn't feel at all. This is better.

All the same, he's no less cautious. Which is why when he hears the scuffle of falling rock, some ways ahead, he grabs for his dagger--at first just a hand on it, but when the rockfall is followed by a muttered curse, his fingers curl tighter. Not a demon. Still an unknown. Crouched on the ground, he leans just slightly forward, to peer around the boulder that stands between him and whoever else is out here.

Comments

[aventuriere]

Whoever else turns out to be a young woman in a long and rather dashing coat, currently flapping in the early-spring breeze as she hops down from above the little rockslide her tramping about has caused. There's mud on the knees of her high-waisted trousers, which she doesn't bother attempting to brush off, far more concerned with the contents of her satchel, flipping it open and peeking inside at what appear to be plants of some sort. Probably not spindleweed. They look a bit the worse for wear, and in case Bellamy can't see that himself from his current vantage, there is Freddie's low cursing in Orlesian to give him a hint.

Her cargo sadly damaged, the path she'd been climbing up the hillside now even more muck and rubble than before, she sets hands on hips and looks about for her next target. She finds, rather than a plant, curly wisps of Bellamy's wayward hair peeking out around the boulder.

"Excuse me!" she calls, somewhere between affront and yoo-hooing at a passing stranger, "You may as well come out from there. There's no use hiding, I have seen you!"

[nonsibi]

Bellamy pulls a breath in through his nose. Then he lets it out, releases his grip on his dagger, and pushes himself to his full height. He tugs the strap of his satchel around so it lays flatter against his chest, and steps out from around the boulder.

"And?" A little gruff, but so is he. Now that he's looking at her full-on, he can get a better impression of who he's dealing with. The accent, the cursing, he's got those as Orlesian. Pretty, in a highbrow kind of way, not unlike Gwen--but muddier at the knees.

"Sorry," he adds, still gruff. "Didn't know anyone else was out here. Inquisition, right?" As if she would have any other reason to be wandering around the wilds surrounding Skyhold.

[aventuriere]

"I am the unfortunate queen of Ferelden, come searching for my wayward husband," Freddie deadpans, which her accent makes somehow even more dead and pan-like than your average speaker of Common can manage. It's not a thick accent, laid lightly over her voice like a skim of jam on dry toast. "Yes, I am with the Inquisition. Naturally. As are you, I assume, or are you a very particular sort of bandit?"

She doesn't seem very concerned about that possibility, possibly because of the loosening hold on the dagger or maybe just because she is rarely very concerned about anything. Except her plant, she is concerned about those, enough that she resumes her looking-about for more. She spots his satchel and fixes it with a narrow-eyed gaze, suddenly interested in a way that were she the one with the knife might make a person worry.

"What do you have there?"

[nonsibi]

He comes very close to smiling at her joke. Not that she's likely to guess it, given the spare way amusement telegraphs for Bellamy--a pull at his mouth, a glint in his eye, tells that would give him away to someone who knew him.

He doesn't bother reassuring her of his legitimate intentions out here in the wild. She doesn't seem overly concerned. Her interest in his herbs is keen enough that Bellamy reacts out of instinct, shuffles a step back so the satchel is turned away from her and hidden mostly behind him.

"Nothing," he says. Clearly a lie, not a very good one.

[aventuriere]

"You guard your nothing zealously, sir," Freddie replies with a laugh, not even trying to pretend she believes him. Bellamy's efforts to put his satchel out of sight and out of mind only make her more curious, and Freddie has never been good at denying her own curiosity.

She advances a couple steps, tapping her lip thoughtfully with a gloved knuckle as she does.

"Could it be rare herbs?" she wonders, "Or perhaps you've encountered some sort of artifact? Avvar, or Chasind? Or perhaps you are sneak-thief, making off with the treasures of the Inquisition?" Though what those treasures might be she really couldn't stay, hard-pressed to think of a one (other than herself, naturally).

[nonsibi]

Bellamy doesn't turn away or anything, but stays where he is, firm in the face of her advancement. He's not going to shrink away. He's been faced with worse than an Orlesian noblewoman; he's in fact been faced with Orlesian noblewomen very recently.

"The chance of me getting close to any treasures is pretty slim. I'm out in the camp. Not in Skyhold."

And while that's not to say that someone out in the camps couldn't break in and commit some petty theft, it would definitely be more difficult. Consider that, lady.

"It's nothing exciting. That's why I said nothing. But it's also not your business." He jerks his chin at the woman, a quick nod. "What about you? Thief?"

[aventuriere]

Freddie snorts softly at Bellamy's slim chances, and it is somehow an exquisitely Orlesian sort of sound. "Now that I believe."

As for herself, she sees his jerked chin and raises her own, angled in a fashion both effortlessly aristocratic and also manages to catch what little sunlight has made it through the trees and show her jaw and the length of her neck to their best advantage.

"A thief of some things, perhaps. Hearts, egos, glory. But not of things that come in satchels." She rolls her eyes, and gestures to her own. "Come, I will offer you every man's favorite bargain. Show me yours, and I shall conceal my disappointment and show you mine in return. Yes?"

[nonsibi]

It's very Orlesian. So is that look, and so is that effortless beauty of hers, which is a little bit like a weapon in the way that it's wielded. That's fair. Everyone comes armed. They don't have to be carrying a sword.

He gives her something like a smile. A quick weird pull at the side of his mouth, flat, drops his gaze. Yeah, okay. That was kind of good. And to that end, he tugs his bag around and lets the flap fall open, so she can see the very plain and boring spindleweed bunches inside.

"How disappointed is disappointed?"

[aventuriere]

"Well," Freddie says, lingering just slightly over the word as she tilts her head, as a few steps closer bring her into better view. "They are fine and healthy specimens of their species, which is more than I might say of certain disappointments past. But, alas, they are not what I seek."

She flips open her own satchel to display several Crystal Grace plants, now somewhat crushed.

"Your spindleweed is safe from me, sir."

[nonsibi]

"Yeah? Thanks." Shaded a little too sarcastic to be a sincere response. That's the joke.

Despite himself, Bellamy is curious enough to lean forward and peer into the lady's bag when she offers it to him. He doesn't recognize the plants in there--he's seen them, he thinks, maybe. The flowers look familiar at least. Not familiar enough that he could call them by name.

"It's not my spindleweed," he tells her, as he tugs his bag back onto his shoulder. "I'm just gathering it. So what're those?" --with a jerk of his chin at the plants she's got.

[aventuriere]

"Isn't it? No, I imagine not," Freddie replies Not the world's best-constructed innuendo but she takes her openings where she finds them, which incidentally is a much better innuendo, but anyway: she sizes Bellamy up with a look as she says it, which, combined with her impeccably-arched eyebrows and that mischievous look in her eye, manage to at least come nearer than most people would to pulling the bit off.

And then she answers his question, because the only thing she likes better than jokey flirtatious banter is scholarship and this is a subject she has no need to warm up to. "It's Crystal Grace. Possibly a rare variety, you see here and here where the petals fork at the tips? That's very unusual, as is this coloration here along the insides-- it may be some form of disease, or it could be a special variation unknown outside the Frostbacks. I intend to investigate, and to determine whether there are any differences in its qualities and application as a result."

[nonsibi]

Yeah. He feels it: scrutiny, kind of, and innuendo. It makes him feel weird. Not all bad weird. Weird in a way he doesn't entirely know what to do with--although he should, really; when they first peeled away from the Circle he was all machismo. Now it's like he's mostly forgotten what to say, what to do, enough that he's briefly caught off-guard.

So what Bellamy does instead is meet that arched eyebrow of hers with a straight on look. Very serious. This is kind of like flirting in that he's not giving in. Some people are into that.

"Yeah," he tells her. "It's for a friend."

But that attitude thaws when she starts talking about the plant she's got. Bellamy is, despite himself, still interested in learning things. That's a character trait that's hard to lose. He leans forward a little, picking out the details of the plant as she describes them.

"Huh." More of an I see than anything else. "So what is its application anyways. Should I be collecting some of that, too?"

[aventuriere]

Very serious! That is kind of like flirting. Enough that Freddie can choose to read it that way if she likes, and she generally does like. That flat look and the slight tip of his head that emphasizes the clench of his jaw and the tendon in his neck--it's pissy, but also a good look.

But interest is nearly always a better look, and she's more than happy to keep talking about plants.

"Likely not. I imagine your friend must be a healer, to need that much spindleweed? Crystal Grace may look as if it would create a cooling balm but it is actually a key ingredient in several rather nasty concoctions. You've seen grenades that splash burning pitch everywhere? They require this plant. Or perhaps not this plant precisely. That is still to be seen!

[nonsibi]

"Something like that, yeah." One of the worst answers to give to any questions, totally non-committal and useless in furthering conversation, but that's because Bellamy is interested in Crystal Grace and its applications and not talking about Clarke to strangers.

"You don't know what it's going to do, but you're collecting it, and what. You're going to experiment with it?" He glances at the lady again, a quick once-over. She's out here foraging around, so despite that accent of hers, she's got to be at least a little hardier than she looks. Still. "They teach you to be into explosions in finishing school?"

[aventuriere]

It really is a terrible response, and Freddie might almost be forced to feel disappointment. But she is spared that fate as Bellamy continues, and then he makes a snarky joke, and she grins.

"Oh no, my tutors would hardly have allowed me to hear an explosion," she laughs, "But the University is a magnificent place. One might learn nearly anything there. But in truth, the grenades are a collaboration. The explosions are the specialty of a friend, and I provide the fuel that makes them do marvelous things. I could build one myself if I chose, of course, but such things are so much more fun when shared, no? Most things are, I find."

[nonsibi]

"Yeah."

On that, at least, Bellamy can more or less agree. Truthfully, his forays into teamwork have occasionally ended bloodily--from necessity. And it's not like anyone designs explosives for a peaceful end.

Anyone who casually drops the University as she's just done can only mean the University of Orlais. Bellamy doesn't have much interest in Val Royeaux or in the country of Orlais as a whole, but in the University? Sure. Nothing he's going to confess to. The purported size of that library, all the books that are in there--a single collection of knowledge that the likes Kaitan (or, hell, Skyhold) has never even seen.

"So is that what you do for the Inquisition? Make explosions?"