On The Road - Emprise du Lion and Western Approach

[the_effect_she_has]

WHO: Christine Delacroix, Merrick Ashara, Samouel Gareth, Korrin Ataash, Kain Highwind, Katniss Everdeen, Cremisius Aclassi, Rachette Dakal, Salvatore, Dismas, Clint Barton, and Fenris
WHAT: Movin' right along, to our separate missions ...
WHEN: First week of Haring
WHERE: The Frostbacks - riding, camping, general hijinks
NOTES: Warnings for sarcasm and probable showing off.

The journey through the Frostbacks is, of course, a grueling one, but only if you are traveling alone. The Inquisition scouting forces are, without a doubt, not alone. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

So clearly, new stories and new friendships or hatreds are just waiting to be written...

Comments

[dalishious]

It's a surprise to Merrick that Katniss knows the song, but he keeps it going, joining in with her at the chorus and carrying it through. He's still focused on his knives when it finishes, as if he doesn't even acknowledge she's there or that they just sang together.

Then he speaks. "I knew you had Elven blood, but Dalish is a surprise. Most of our kind won't even get close enough to a human to spit on them, much less sleep with one."

[the_effect_she_has]

Katniss paused, something in her jaw tightening there, before she stuck her knife in the snow. A touch harder than necessary. She then packed the meat with a little bit of snow, and carefully packed it in clean cloth. It was the last one, and she had a nice stack of them for sale and for trade.

Only when she was cleaning her hands of blood, did she speak. "My mother was her clan's healer -- so she had gone off to gather herbs for healing potions. She wandered too far, and was set upon by a bear. My father was hunting there -- and saved her. Then he took her back to his home to heal her wounds. He fell in love with her - wanted to marry her - but when she chose her clan over him ... he let her go with a sad smile. He always said you could never cage a wild bird - they just wouldn't sing to you the same way."

She looked over at Merrick, her grey eyes steady, "So as you can see - my father wasn't a man who should be spit upon. By the Dalish -- or anyone else."

[dalishious]

Merrick just rolls his eyes at that last part. Clearly, Katniss is a bit sensitive. He holds his pipe between his teeth as he cleans each knife carefully. It takes time--he has a lot of them. The two main daggers he uses are laid out before him, and now he's working through his throwing knives.

Every now and then, he takes a hearty drink from the flask he keeps near his boot. Campfire hooch. Never leave home without it.

He doesn't seem interested in commenting on her story, nor does he give any indication that he wants to talk to her any further.

[the_effect_she_has]

She glowered at him, as she took her own knife out of the snow, and proceeded to sit in front of her own tent to sharpen it. She remarked, as she brought the whetstone to the metal. "You have an amazing voice."

A beat, and then she added, "For a prick, anyways."

[dalishious]

"And you hunt well for an uptight bitch," he replies without a beat. Honestly, he doesn't think he said anything particularly insulting--or insulting at all, really--but if that's how she wants to play it, he has no problem rolling with it.

[the_effect_she_has]

She stops for a moment, and stares at him, before one corner of her mouth twisted up. "Well ... I can't deny either one of those statements."

A more considering look, and finally she sighed. Time to eat some crow, but not for her own sake. For Pel, and Ellana, for Salem and for even Gavin. She cared for them and they cared about Merrick. She had promised, swore she would keep an eye out on Merrick -- and antagonizing him over something that he probably did not even realized raised her ire?

Well, made her no better than those who would judge without knowing her.

"I apologize. I have had a ... bad taste in my mouth for a long time, about how people treat my shared heritage. I shouldn't have taken that out on you."

[dalishious]

Merrick doesn't seem ruffled in the slightest. Finished with his knife work for the time being, he stokes the fire a bit then goes back to his spot to continue the smoking and drinking process.

"I just don't get why," he says after a bit, slouched close to the fire's warmth. "Seems like you should just be happy you look like a human. The way you act, it's like being handed a sack of gold for doing nothing and then whining about it."

[the_effect_she_has]

From what the others were telling her, the fact that he didn't heft a knife at her face was probably the best sign she was going to get that he accepted her apology, so she went back to finishing sharpening her knife, and then put it into place.

She sat in front of the fire, taking out a bit of bone to carefully carve, sitting in peaceful silence until Merrick's words drew her out. She was silent a few moments longer, her expression becoming pensive.

"Maybe it would have been different, if my father had been the kind of shemalan who never wanted children who were half-blooded. Or that my mother had simply dumped my sister and I with our father and never looked back. I am sure others have been through that - their first rejection is their own parents, so why would they want to say they had half-blood? Why wouldn't they want to hide, if only to be accepted."

She brings her tiny carving up a little, to blow the shavings free. "But Prim and I weren't raised that way. My father loved us, because we were part of our mother, and part of him. And my mother ... well, she still left, again and again. She made it clear that her clan would never accept us - but she also made it clear that we were still part of the Blood. That we should know both sides of our people, and take pride that despite thousands of years of oppression -- elves were still here. I think she felt guilty, honestly, or maybe ashamed of herself of what she could not do - leave her clan or admit to them what she had done -- and she thought teaching us the Old Ways would make up for her multitude of sins."

She looked up them, her grey eyes serious, "Not saying that it did, either. But I've never been ashamed of who I am, where I came from. If there is nothing else I have learned -- I'll never be looked on with respect, if I do not respect myself. All of myself."

[dalishious]

"I didn't ask for your life story," Merrick says pointedly once she's done, but he does take it all in. He still doesn't quite understand it, but it's of no relevance to him either way. He watches her carve as he smokes; her technique is different than his, and inferior in his opinion, but she's not bad at it.

"I don't put much stock in the Old Ways," he remarks, adjusting his feet so they're as close to the fire as they can get without burning. "It just felt right, being in the woods. Made sense."

[the_effect_she_has]

She arches an eyebrow at him, because he may not have asked but he listened anyways. She is starting to see why the others talk about Merrick that way - he does not want to show he cares. She's ... been there more times than she cares to.

She blows the shavings away, still working on her chess piece. "I do." Not said defensively, just said as is. She looked over at him sharply at that, before she smiled a little at her carving. "The woods are the only place that make sense."