( She wants her gaze to be challenging - it is not. It is the look of a wounded animal. )
Then it lies only with how you have judged me.
( Wanting, weak, or common. Not a legendary Warden who guards Thedas from the Blight, but a smith who can work metal to her will so much more easily than she can her words. She is not one who has felt the sting of self-doubt overmuch, is steady and calm most times, but this has— shaken her. Left her wondering. Either she has such poor understanding of her feelings and how it seems to her Rani feels that she has delusions of requited adoration, or there lies some fault in her so massive, some element so repulsive, that Rani would set that precious thing aside so easily and find her joys and satisfaction with another. And maybe it is neither of those things at all, she has sense enough to understand that, but both burn at her with such an intensity that she may as well have held her hand in the forge itself.
She swallows thickly. She has spoken more in the past few minutes than she might in a whole afternoon or day. )
no subject
Then it lies only with how you have judged me.
( Wanting, weak, or common. Not a legendary Warden who guards Thedas from the Blight, but a smith who can work metal to her will so much more easily than she can her words. She is not one who has felt the sting of self-doubt overmuch, is steady and calm most times, but this has— shaken her. Left her wondering. Either she has such poor understanding of her feelings and how it seems to her Rani feels that she has delusions of requited adoration, or there lies some fault in her so massive, some element so repulsive, that Rani would set that precious thing aside so easily and find her joys and satisfaction with another. And maybe it is neither of those things at all, she has sense enough to understand that, but both burn at her with such an intensity that she may as well have held her hand in the forge itself.
She swallows thickly. She has spoken more in the past few minutes than she might in a whole afternoon or day. )
That is what you enjoy best.