I. CLOSED.

[glandival]

WHO: Sabine and Martel
WHAT: We were promised rescuing lost animals.
WHEN: Haring 16
WHERE: Skyhold and beyond.

Sabine had spent just enough time in Skyhold to get the chill off her bones and eat something warm before braving the colder, steeper climbs of the Frostbacks once more. She leads the way, gamely clambouring over grey rocks, gloved hands over feet strapped into sturdy, light-weight boots, and a woollen cape that billows out like a sail at each gust of wind. Her nose has been pink since introduction, staying pink once they'd left the queerly warm heights of the Skyhold fortress. Her hair has been tamed, barely, into a thick braid, curls slipping free, and long, slender ears nipped by frigid air.

"But you're not a demon," she is saying. They're on the topic of how the big burly human got shat out of a fade rift, which normally is demons. Her Orlesian accent curls musical in her otherwise husky voice. "And you're not from the Fade."

Bear with her, here.

She temporarily disappears over a ledge of rock and snow, the sound of leather skidding along ice audible, followed by the sound of a landing that doesn't imply she broke anything. But she expects an answer all the same -- there are only five reasons she would be taking this journey with a human man. One is that he's a fabled rifter. The other four are the knives she has hidden on her person.

Comments

[glandival]

Tiresome nobility. Sabine's position allows her to hide her own wry, thin smile at that, not wanting to give the shem the impression of-- something. Too much implied friendliness, maybe, the least of all reason being that she genuinely does not feel any, and it does nothing for her to make him think otherwise. But all the same, it's not a bad thing to hear a human speak of the limits of their own valour with an appropriate amount of cynicism.

"Oui," she says, of the landscape. "I saw the road ahead, wasn't sure if he'd make it, and set him free here. Maybe he'll be looking for food."

There is a note of guilt in her voice. She didn't exactly want to leave the old horse to his fate, nor did she want to tie him someplace only to starve to death. She starts her way down, loose pebbles and ice sliding under her feet, keeping her balance in a vaguely helterskelter fashion. "He won't have got too far. He was a slow fucker."

[apostasia]

Martel has thoroughly explored his limits in all manner of directions; there is no one who can speak more wryly of them, and perhaps if he were to hear the flatly stated opinion that the world might've been better if Vanion had killed him when he had the chance, he probably wouldn't disagree. It would've been the right call -

But he would have been replaced, and with someone they knew less well to predict, and so it is a self-pityingly pointless fantasy in which Martel vastly overestimates his own essential purpose in the world. So perhaps it's just as well she's not quick to reward his modicum of self-awareness.

"How long has he had?" he asks, letting the rest go - not quite following her but fanning out a little, keeping her in easy reach on the offchance she loses her footing. He'd rather not have to dive for her, for pity's sake.

[glandival]

"Time it takes going back up, which is slower than going down. Then I ate something, then I found you."

And the rest is history. Maybe she doesn't operate in things like hours and minutes, but events, strung together like beads on a string. Or she doesn't want to admit how long it's been in actual quantifiable words. Who knows, it's an elven mystery.

As it happens, Sabine is as light on her feet as any stereotype about elves might inform. Her clothing isn't particularly on par with even the freelance rogues, her boots worn and her trousers made of wool and canvas, and the only armor she wears is the leather on her feet, the lambskin fitting her hands. More like a servant used to rough work than an adventurer, but maybe she makes up for it with enthusiasm. The last few feet of descent are done in wild lopes, landing firm on steadier ground.

She seems to choose a direction, headed to a specific tree that stands out from the rest. "He'd been nibbling on the moss, last I saw him," she says, gloved fingertips touching where soft horsey muzzle had worked it over with scarier teeth.

[apostasia]

In Martel's retelling of this, if he should ever deign to retell this (and he might, if Adelaide gets wind of it and he feels the need to correct any misconceptions), it will definitely involve him finding her. Especially as his help had not been so much desired as blatantly settled for.

He is not quite such a pedant as to announce it presently, mind you, when there are slightly more important things to attend to.

"He'll take the easiest route," he predicts, casting his eye from a vantage point nearby her chosen tree. "Damnably skittish creatures."

Even war horses are temperamental that way. Get the damned thing to do anything that isn't scamper towards some bloody apples -

"This way."