Where There's Smoke Pt. 2

[byblow]

WHO: Beleth Ashara, Gavin Ashara, Alistair
WHAT: Two and a half elves go apostate hunting.
WHEN: NOW
WHERE: The Fallow Mire
NOTES: Probably violence. Maybe crying. Perhaps success.

Comments

[arlathvhen]

If Beleth knew Alistair better, and if it wasn't Gavin--Cyril perhaps, or Pel, someone that hadn't just had a whole big heap of issues dropped on the clan, she might have joked. Dalish? What Dalish--That Dalish? Never seen them.

But with the way that Gavin has already been avoiding the rest of the clan, she isn't going to take that chance. Instead, she glanced to Alistair--The Alistair™, who helped King Cousland defeat the archdemon. Hopefully he wouldn't realize she was the one joking to Zevran about his attractiveness to elves. "Ah. Yes, we're from the same clan. Clan Ashara. Um--" She glanced at Gavin. Help. "--There's a few of us, in the Inquisition."

After a few moments, she went on. "...I've met the man we're looking for. He's kind of...mean. He kept yelling at me. And! I mean. He hurt some other scouts! So that's pretty mean. Um. In my opinion..."

[slipshot]

"Beleth, Pel, Cyril, Merrick and I are all from the same clan," Gavin affirmed, throwing a bemused look at Beleth. Since when had she stuttered every other word. "There are a few more in the inquisition that aren't, though, including someone named 'Twisted Fate' which is the strangest name I've ever heard, and one really cute one I keep missing." He'd seen her around, but they still hadn't had a conversation. Shame.

When Beleth continued, however, he looked at her honestly confused. In her opinion? 'Pretty mean'?

"You alright, Bel?"

[byblow]

"That does beat The Iron Bull," Alistair says, and decides, "I'm calling him Twist." Does he want to be called Twist? Will he stab Alistair through the neck for doing so? Only time will tell.

His boot sinks three inches into a spot of especially soft mud. Before he squelches it back out, he gives the ground a look that's very fond. Very nostalgic. This won't last more than a few minutes, but it's still the source of his smile when he looks sideways at Beleth--he doesn't have much to compare to to decide that stammering isn't normal.

"They wouldn't have sent you after him again if you couldn't take him," he says. "It will be fine."

[arlathvhen]

"Sina," Beleth adds, looking up. "And her sister. Um--I never met her sister, but Sina is nice. There's also--Ah, Salem. I met him when I was at Skyhold between trips." You needed to take a bit off from this place, or the Mire would just...get to you. "He's pretty nice, too." Or at least, he was to Beleth. Maybe not to any humans, but. Oh well.

Gavin does, however, get a look when he asks if she's alright, and she decides to elbow him the next time Alistair isn't looking.

Beleth isn't too happy about the mud, either. One look at it, and she'd decided that she would allow her pride to take enough of a blow to wear the human boots. She could take snow and hard ground and a lot of things, but mud was where the humans finally managed to cross a line. They finally found a place terrible enough that the Dalish wouldn't go here if they had any choice in the matter.

"...I guess so. He didn't seem dangerous. Just old. And mean."

[slipshot]

"Sina! That's the one I've heard is really cute." He declares, as if this was important information.

Gavin didn't seem to notice the mud at all. Maybe that's what happened when you spent a week digging latrines in the Fallow Mire. You became impervious to the grossness of mud. Nothing would ever be so awful as that again. So he just squelches and slops as if he's taking a stroll in a meadow. With the amount of mud on his feet, it was impossible to tell whether he was wearing shoes or not, anyway.

"So who is this guy, anyway?" He asked, having paid basically no attention when the were assigned to the mission, beyond 'you'll be heading out and going with Alistair and Beleth'. He figured Beleth would pick up on whatever he'd missed, anyway.

[arlathvhen]

"Sina's a nice girl. But her clan--did you know--" She stopped, and remembered that she was about to gossip about clans in front of a shemlen. Guh. She doubted that Alistair would even understand half the intrigues that went on between clans. "--Well, her clan is a little odd, but she's nice." She'll tell Gavin more about it when she doesn't have a human breathing down her neck.

Luckily, Gavin managed to introduce a perfectly safe topic to discuss with everyone involved. She gave a little sigh, shaking her head.

"His house was on fire. So me and Merrick and a few others went over to help. Like. Hello, you probably want some assistance, right? But at first he just yelled at me. Then he told us that he needed a notebook inside, said that he was working on a cure for the plague. We tried to get more info out of him, but he kept yelling and waving his arms at me. We got him the notebook, but he wasn't very fun to deal with. Kept calling me names and stuff. Still...I thought that he was just kinda...not all there, but not dangerous." She shrugged. "I guess that's what I get for assuming."