faderift | What Comes Due | Open (with prompt for Myr)

Entry tags:

What Comes Due | Open (with prompt for Myr)

WHO: Sorrel
WHAT: Dietary supplements
WHEN: A good bit after Kirkwail
WHERE: Just outside Kirkwall
NOTES: hunting gore, ect.

Winter in Kirkwall was about as unpleasant as anything else in Kirkwall. It had a scrubby, grasping character, and if it had been a person it would have been a bent old man, steely-haired, dressed in rags, and in possession of a lengthy bankroll which he would neither evidence nor share. In such a manner did the flowers sleep under the begrudging snow around the city; secret, miserly, and invisible.

It was, in a word, absolutely miserable hunting. Even if the hungry habits of the city's ordinary population of scavengers had not made it so, nature herself would have. Sorrel quietly attributed it to some unheard-of curse from Andruil, but did not share this opinion with anyone when he went out into it. Sometimes, you just need to know your best audience; Kirkwall was not it. And anyways, he was out of practice enough that there was probably no curse here not going by the more ordinary name of 'laziness,' not that hunting was his job. Sorrel left Kirkwall in sensible leather footwraps, robes left behind in favor of practical, close-bodied leathers, bow, arrows, and kit in tow. He was going to get the hell out of this city, just for a little while. He needed the air, and the quiet, and the clean empty hate of the world to wash away the clinging, personal hatred that came with living in the Gallows, or in Kirkwall at all.

And it felt good, to breathe.

_i._for myr_
....And, as promised, he brought Myr along with him! The weather had begun grey and sullen, lightening slowly over the morning until the sky shone with that particular purity of blue that was unique to bright winter afternoons. The cold was biting, even though the wind was low, but Sorrel paid it no mind with the sun warming his back, and was happy to chat quietly with Myr along their path. Luck, and a lot of trudging through an ice-backed skin of snow-over-mud eventually found them a chance when they crossed a deer-path, and they'd turned to follow it without much real hope, though in a cheerful spirit.

Or, Sorrel felt cheerful. The point of this was, in a small part, to get a very petty sort of comeuppance, and that is always an emotion to warm one's heart, even when your fingertips are numb and tingling.

"What do you think of it, so far?" He was presently asking, with that very same cheer. Sorrel turned a grin on Myr as he did so; alright, he was enjoying it, and wouldn't apologize. It's a beautiful day.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...Do you think so," Sorrel replies, having come to a stop while Myr sorts himself out. It's an open question whether they'll actually catch anything, at this rate, "There are some who'd argue being a bit uncomfortable is part of the point, you know."

Some here being code for Sorrel, but he doesn't press the point home, only rolls his eyes indulgently. It's too bright and clear to argue, and Myr did come out with him, city-elf bundles and an overlarge pack, and everything. It counted for something.

"Look," He pointed out the ground ahead of them, narrow as it was, "You know what this is? It's a deer-path. Roads in the forest, made only by animals."

"Even so, and while respecting their opinions, I prefer to feel my fingers." He wiggles them in demonstration, grinning to soften the retort.

The foolishness is packed away easily as the scarf in the next instant as Sorrel indicates the track. "Huh." They're certainly nearly as big as people, so it would stand to reason they'd need paths too--Myr'd just never thought so much about those tracks through the underbrush. "How do they decide where to start them?"

He crunches up alongside Sorrel in the snow as he asks, ducking his head a little for a deer's-eye view of it.

Edited 2019-02-26 04:43 (UTC)

"What, like they're planning it? They're deer," For Myr's sake, Sorrel casts his gaze up at the sky, as if to ask Myr's supposed Maker why he made this one when he could have made anything at all with the same time. Are you serious here, city-boy? "They're born out here and they walk the same ways because they all want to live. Only so many places to eat and find one another, in the world."

Honestly. But, then Sorrel has a thought.

"Now think, deer all going to same places, eating up the greens. Then they have to graze elsewhere. These trails are used by wolves, too, so there's always pressure to change. The Forest shifts, like the Beyond," He said thoughtfully, slipping without thought into the Dalish colloquialism. It was always The Fade in Kirkwall, as if it were only a pale imitation. Sorrel shrugs and leads Myr onward, down the narrow stream of the Deer-trail, "The veil only divides us from what's Beyond, it doesn't make us so different that we wouldn't recognize one another. They share a lot of the same reasons as the deer-trails. Can you walk any quieter?"

"'Decide' wasn't the right word, perhaps--" There's a hint of not-quite-impatience around Myr's tone, though he keeps the you know what I meant to himself, because: No, he really wasn't all that clear. But Sorrel does go on to answer the question he hadn't formulated and that's good enough for him.

Or, well, almost. He makes a deliberate effort to step a little more carefully--slowing down, of course, as he does--while he chews on the other man's response. "All right--but when they do come to a place where they've not ever been before, what makes them go one place and not another? Simply--" There's a branch in the way--there's a branch in the way, he's so distracted trying to pull the idea out into reality he nearly runs face-first into it, ducking at the last moment with a knight-enchanter's reflexes. "--flowing along the path with the least resistance? Carving it out like water?"

"I don't know why you're asking me anything, when you won't listen to the answer. They're deer," He says it, not completely without impatience, but in an air of amusement rather than disdain, "They don't go around like Shemlen, building roads because they might need them later. They go where they're going because they actually need something; food, or sex, or water, or space to live, or not to be eaten. They shape the world because they're part of the shape."

Don't exasperate your tone at him, circle-mage. It's not his fault you need every answer spelled out to you, as if magic existed in books only and not in every living thing around you. And you only recently able to read them anyways!

"Water only wants to go down. Deer want lots of things, sometimes all at once. People are even more complicated. Don't get me started on Halla and—" Sorrel stopped. The trees were opening out ahead of them, the sun shining cold down onto a browned and scrubby clearing, close-cropped, surrounded by brambles. There was a gap ahead, formed by the habitual passage of larger creatures, and continued on the opposite side, but crouched and nibbling in the shadow of the shrubbery were a small knot of rabbits. Sorrel motioned to Myr for silence and unslung his bow, crouching on silent feet to go a bit nearer, watching.

They were soft little things, round and snub-earred, even this far north, possibly descended from a Ferelden breed brought north during the blight. Their fur was patchy and grey, as if there had been some aborted attempt to turn white with the winter, but if they had wanted to finish the transformation, it had never obliged them. There were three, and every now and then, one would sit up a little and listen, looking in all directions, and then go back to tearing at the thin winter grass. Their warren must have been nearby.

"Well?" Sorrel whispered, when he was quite sure they were going to have the time to sit there, and not immediately scare them off, "Go on. Feed the clan."

It wasn't a very good joke. But then, it wasn't meant to make Myr laugh, after all.

This is one of those things, Myr decides, that is getting lost in translation and without the will on both sides of the conversation to work it out--well.

Another benefit of having eyes again is he can roll them--or rather, more charitably, lift them to the heavens in silent entreaty of the Maker. It means he nearly--nearly, but doesn't--miss Sorrel's gesture for silence, and misses entirely why it's made and why his companion's unslinging the bow for a long second or two. Why are they--

Ah. Oh. Myr goes still on sighting the rabbits, aware without consciously being so that now they're actually hunting instead of just taking a lovely walk in the woods. He takes his cue from Sorrel and stands watching them at silflay, expecting any second the other man's going to take aim at one of them and kill it.

Imagine his surprise when that's not what happens; his look of incredulity is particularly choice, as is the abbreviated gesture something along the lines of Do I look like I'm carrying a bow? --Because he isn't, having left the practice bow he'd been learning with back in the Gallows. Though knowing as much as he does of Sorrel now, he suspects that's half the point of the comment.

All right. All right, he's got to kill a rabbit. He's a mage, he's resourceful, he's--probably going to get laughed at if he incinerates them all with flashfire or has whatever insects that'll rouse in this cold sting the poor bunnies to death. He doesn't have a bow. Sorrel's definitely not going to loan him a bow.

He does have decades-old memories of the alienage and older boys chucking rocks at the birds stealing fruit from his father's carefully tended garden--and sometimes they'd hit one, and sometimes that meant a little meat at dinner. Feed the clan.

Keeping his eyes on the rabbits, Myr hunkers down to feel through the patchy snow and half-rotted leaves. It doesn't take too long to find a suitable stone, one that fits his hand comfortably, and he stands back up straight quietly as he can. Studies the rabbits the same way he would if he were gauging the range for a spell--cheating, a little, by feeling out that distance through the Fade--before hefting the rock and waiting.

Waiting.

One of the rabbits pauses in eating and sits up to clean its face with both paws. It doesn't see the rock coming; the blow catches it in the jaw and neck, sending it head-over-heels with a horrid shriek. An explosion of frantic action as the other two leap for the bushes and the wounded rabbit struggles to right itself and flee, bleeding from a lopsided face and drunken-staggering--and Myr swears beneath his breath, launching himself after it.

He'd meant to hit it in the skull--either a clean kill or a stunned bunny--and instead now he's got to chase it into the brush and catch it up and put it out of its misery--

He wasn't expecting much. If anything, he was expecting a complaint, or at least a demand for the bow, which Sorrel had had every intention of sharing, if it had been asked-for. If he had thought for a minute, he'd have said that Myr was likely to resort more to magic than anything else.

It's not cheating, after all, if it gets the job done. The trick was to get the job done without destroying— and then Myr throws the rock.

Sorrel stands as Myr goes crashing through the brush, and the rabbits scatter in all directions. He watches for a moment, then sighs, and follows, re-stowing his bow. The panicked, flopping rabbit, flops away as best it can, in a random, terrible fashion that belies the state of what remains of its brains; Sorrel considers helping it, or Myr, and decides against it. It's awful, but it's a lesson, and an important one that doesn't bear forgetting.

Life is ugly, and unclean. Death is never easy, and you owe it to the world to gain the skill to make it at least easier on all the things that have to die, so that you can continue living. The rabbit joins that number, under Myr's hands, and Sorrel sighs again.

"Well, you killed it," He's not without some grudging respect, despite the mess of it all. Whatever else he is, Myrobalan Shivana is not a scrub or a coward, and that counts for a great deal, "You definitely did kill it."

"I'd meant to hit it in the head," Myr says, rueful and regretful both, once it's all over and he's cut the rabbit's throat to end its suffering. "I s'pose I sort of did." It's a little hard to look the poor maimed thing in the face to examine exactly what he'd done to it, but he does it anyway, a twitch at the corner of one eye belying his discomfort with what he's done.

He's killed before, men and animals both, but usually with more...grace. Than this. He works the rabbit's shattered jaw a little with one finger before wincing.

"Would've gone cleaner with magic. --We've got to dress it now, right?"

Because when in discomfort or doubt it's better to keep his momentum going and just. Fix the situation on the move.

Edited 2019-03-07 04:08 (UTC)

"Well, why didn't you use magic, then?" Sorrel asks with justified bafflement. Mythal's dubious fucking mercy, Myr! "No, you've got to dress it. I've got to get a fire going. Did you want to use that knife for it?"

Sorrel eyes the knife in Myr's hand dubiously, as if uncertain he should be allowed to keep it. But then, that might just be for the joke of it, because he says nothing more, only turns and gestures back towards the clearing.

"I'll set the field-camp, while you work. Unless you need a minder for this?"

Edited 2019-03-07 04:37 (UTC)

The look Myr gives Sorrel in return is equally baffled. "You brought a bow," he points out. "I thought--the point was I couldn't just use magic to make this easier." Because if he could, well, there's a lot he'd have done differently. Starting with not wearing all the extra clothing in favor of something a little more convenient using a warming glyph or two.

Ending with not murdering a rabbit with a rock. Yikes. He glances down at his own knife, notes the blood on it and wipes it clean on the rabbit's fur with absentminded care. "This'll do," he says as absently. "But I--"

"Unless you need a minder for this?"

Unaccountably (no, he knows exactly why but won't analyze it right now,) the question puts his hackles up. No, he almost snaps back stubbornly--it's fine, he's fine, he's not sheltered or useless, he can figure it out on his own! ...Or butcher the rabbit in an unintended, unusable way because he hasn't really ever done this before.

For once, reason wins over wounded pride. "I've never cleaned a rabbit before." His tone is exceptionally mild. His expression isn't quite--it takes him a moment to get that under control--but it gets easier as he talks more. "So unless you'd like whatever results from me working it out on my own--I'd appreciate a few pointers."

"No, Myr, I'm Dalish. The point is to look after the clan, and magic is just another part of the clan's tools to do just that; we've got enough challenges without making more work."

And Sorrel can't help but smile. It's not a smirk, or a grin, that mean-spirited sort of thing where it's clear he's laughing, but not with anyone but himself. A real smile, and it changes his face, opens it somehow.

"There you go, that didn't hurt too badly, did it?" His teasing is gentler, and he sweetens it further by crouching down by Myr and bumping his shoulder against Myr's own, companionable, "Tel garas solasan, Myr. You can't live in your pride, if you want to be of use. Here, grip it like this..."

Sorrel shows Myr, first in pantomime, and then by putting his hands over the other's, how to grip the Rabbit by the chin, cut the skin, and pull, neatly inverting the pelt until it comes off, neatly, all in one piece. The rabbit hangs naked, nearly bloodless save for its ruined face, as if it had merely been stripped of a shirt, rather than its skin entire. And then Sorrel uses little more than his bare hands to scoop out the offal in one messy handful, like a palm full of worms, leaving nothing behind save fat and meat, glistening pink and promising.

"C'mon, you get the fire while I wash up," His hands are smeared with red, and he shows them palm-up, to laugh at Myr's expression, "Or, we both will. And then we'll cook it; food'll do us both good."

...Oh.

Oh.

When Sorrel smiles like that, it's a lot easier to like him. Myr hesitates a stunned second before smiling back, a little bemused but earnest for all that. "No," he admits, "I suppose it didn't." And a lot less than being a stubborn ass about it would have. He's recovered enough by the time Sorrel comes over to him to return the shoulder-bump and turn all his formidable attention to the lesson of cleaning a rabbit. It's easier than he thought it would be, almost so much as to make that childish bit of him that likes to see the Maker's hand in individual details (which isn't how it worked, not really) wonder that they weren't created specifically to feed people.

A nice just-so story, but not very theologically valid.

The face he makes at Sorrel's hands is one of exquisite and feigned and overacted disgust, because really: It's not that bad, but so much of the weight has lifted off their relationship he can tease: "Oh, I see, it's that the rock was too much, I'm supposed to be going after them barehanded. --And I hardly think the fire'll mind a little blood in it, so," he makes a shooing motion; go wash up and he'll take care of that part of camp.

Getting on toward spring--slowly, so slowly, but inevitably--as it is there's yet enough combustible material around that Myr has a modest heap of it in short order. He doesn't scruple from using magic for the fire, now that the imaginary block on it is out of his head. Laying firewood is still not something he's precisely expert at, but really you don't need to be when you're going to keep it all going with a glyph raked into the winter-hard dirt with a handy piece of stick. Only set your kindling down carefully enough not to disturb the lines, speak the word to bring it to life, and pretty soon they've got a cheery blaze going and he can go rub his hands clean in a linger patch of snow.

"D'you have any designs on the liver?" he asks, a little cagily, once they've had a chance to settle in with meat spitted and roasting. Somebody's got a favorite part of the animal.

"If you want it, you're welcome to it," Sorrel replies, "If you'll..."

Whatever Sorrel was about to say drops off in a drawl, trailing away to nothing, He's not looking at Myr, instead Sorrel is focused behind him, staring at something else there in the clearing with them.

"Andaran atish’an, lethallin," He says quietly, too quietly to be speaking to Myr and certainly too quiet to be speaking to whatever, whoever is behind him, "Myr, whatever you do, don't panic. Just stay calm, and move slowly."

Behind Myr, still half-shrouded in the shade of the overhanding canopy, is a Halla. She's beautiful in her horns, carved but overgrown, as if she had been cared for dearly, once, and then gone years and years without knowing a gentle touch. But she knows these two, this smell, and approaches the fire without fear. Her hooves are silent in the marshy leaf-litter, dampened into compressed sponge by the recent slush and melt. She bends her head, snuffles thoughtfully at the back of Myr's head, and then waits, studying him with eyes of liquid black, reflecting the light of the day like a field of stars, and does not startle when he turns to face her.

She weighs him, in that gaze, and finds nothing worth fearing. Hello, little lost foundling; I know you, I know you, I know you.

Myr's face, ordinarily so changeable a mirror of his emotions, goes through puzzlement to concern to alarm to--nothing, a blank studied wariness at Don't panic. Because of course--to him--that means there's something behind him that would otherwise be worthy of panic, something that might attack if he moves wrong or even breathes wrong. A part of him clamors to get up, throw a barrier, defend against whatever's come up on them--

But he trusts Sorrel now in a way he hadn't before, precisely, a trust born from the splintering brittle eggshell of his own pride. So he is very still as the whatever-it-is comes close enough to wuffle at his hair (a wolf? A bear? They'd smell different, surely, even in the cold--), and very still as it moves away, and only turns to look, with aching care, after a long moment has passed. After he's steeled himself to not react to whatever very unpleasant...surprise...is...waiting...

He makes a noise low in the back of his throat, surprise like a sob: He knows a halla when he's nose-to-nose with one and the look of her is both bittersweet and familiar. It seems almost as if he should say something to greet her, to answer that unvoiced feeling of instant familiarity--but words fail him to look her in the eyes and see a sister staring back. (His is a credulous and believing heart, primed for faith, but he couldn't believe every story; couldn't take it on scant evidence that elves and halla were kin.)

Instead, he lifts a hand to her, palm out, fingers splayed, the gesture tentative and stopping far short of touching that velvet nose. His own eyes are wide and bright with wonder.

Myr stares at the Halla for long enough that Sorrel begins to fear he really will panic, and maybe scare her into her own fit of startlement. A spooked Halla is a dangerous Halla— neither the hooves nore the horns are ornamental. But he seems, somehow, to understand. Maybe all the intervening centuries, the Chantry's voice, and the walls of the circle... even that wasn't enough to drown out the ancient blood of Elvhenan, not completely.

The Halla noses forward, a brief touch, velvet and hay-breath at the very center of Myr's palm. And she snorts at the smell; blood, ash, magic and fire. Then she turns, puts her ears up, swiveling with slow vigilance, the rest of her as still and white as midnight snowfall. One moment more she lingers, looking over their little fire, over Sorrel himself, who nods his respect. It's a moment of communication, as loud in the silence as the meaningful glance of a married couple, and as blatant. And then she bounds away, one hoofbeat then another, and then all is quiet, as if she were a ghost, gone between one breath and the next.

There is the impression of a cloven hoof in the ground, inches from Myr's knee, clear and sharp and deep.

"Could you hear her?" Sorrel asks, into the holy silence. It curls like smoke and incense between the columns of the trees, all the world made a temple in the wake of the Halla's passing, "She spoke to you."

Edited 2019-03-09 18:34 (UTC)

He closes his fingers around that moment of contact, pressing hand to heart as he watches her wheel and vanish into the forest once more. He's got eyes for little else until she has; only then does he look around him, seeing the hoofprint--seeing Sorrel watching him and looks away, almost bashful.

It isn't shame--it isn't that. He isn't ashamed to have looked so in front of someone else, only--only, he is not accustomed to being so vulnerable in the presence of the sacred before someone he still scarcely knows, however fondly he thinks of the other man now. It takes him yet another moment to order his thoughts enough to answer the question he's been asked: "Could you hear her?"

"I," he starts, stops. It wasn't hearing, exactly, but there'd been something there that he can't quite articulate. "I felt-- It was as if she'd been searching for me; she knew who I was and she'd come looking even though--we'd never met before."

It hadn't been words. But it had gotten through, even so. Myr looks to Sorrel once more, a species of longing plain in his face. Had he understood?

Sorrel looks at him blankly, struggling to give nothing away. Behind his teeth stand the word I told you so, which were neither fair nor truly warranted, and in his eyes stood a certain wonder of his own. Slowly, he leaned forward, around their small fire, reached out with the familiarity of a lover, or a brother, and gave Myr's nearest ear a sharp, jarring tug.

"Huh. Guess you're vhen after all, circle-boy," He cocks his head and gives Myr the grace of a grin that only Beleth sees with any regularity: pure mischief. Tension eases, and though the world is no less hallowed, the air laughs rather than sings, and the spell is broken, "Though I suppose you'd have to be, if a Halla recognizes you."

This last said in lofty tones, approving and mocking all in one. He nods towards the rabbit, as if satisfied by some job well-done.

"C'mon, it'll burn. You can ask whatever you like, but turn the meat while you do it."

Edited 2019-03-11 14:12 (UTC)

"Ow." Since he's got a cousin near enough to a brother Myr's sort-of expecting that's going to happen when Sorrel leans in and reaches like that--but sort-of expecting doesn't mean he won't shoot the other man a dirty look in that first instant. What was that for? he doesn't say--because it dawns on him all of a sudden, and he rubs the side of his head with a sheepish answering grin.

"Not so flat as you were expecting, huh?" It is a relief and a release both to rejoin the day-to-day world, to joke and laugh and tend to the rabbit rather than let himself vanish into contemplation of what just happened. (That will be for later, when he's lying beside Simon sleepless at night or in the quiet of the service chapel.) He sets to managing their meal-to-be with a will, making up what he lacks in finesse at camp cuisine with enthusiasm.

...All right, so maybe you can't do that with cooking, and maybe he figures that out and backs off before he actually ruins anything. Even if there's a briefly precarious moment as he's getting it turned. "--So it's true you can simply ask them for anything you need help with, and they'll oblige?"

"Well,you can always ask," Sorrel puts himself opposite Myr across the fire, close enough to be warmed, though he doesn't sit, "Halla are like people; they know what duty is, and beauty, they fall in love, and have opinions about everything."

There's a world of stories in every word, the life of a hundred people tied to a breeding-herd of beings no more similar to a human, or an elf, than a dragon is to a carthorse. And yet, they were all as one, family and fate intertwined.

"But that's all it is, you know: asking. You just have to accept it, when they say they won't do something; they aren't slaves, after all."

Edited 2019-03-13 17:54 (UTC)

"Oh. I hadn't thought slaves, so much, as--" As mabari, which Myr's got a feeling now is a demeaning comparison, however intelligent the big dogs were. "--well; I'd thought wrong," he concludes, with an upward quirk of one corner of his mouth.

He looks down at the cooking rabbit, thoughtfully. "How do you hear them? When they speak to you, that is--is it truly words or something," he gestures like he's trying to pull those self-same words from the air, at a loss for them himself, "more like knowing how they feel?"

A pause, and then a little more hushed: "And can you get better at it?"

There's a sharp-eyed moment in there, when he is certain, certain Myr is about to compare Halla to pets, but the moment passes and Myr is, thankfully, wiser than that.

"Sometimes words," He shrugs, thoughtfully. Funny how you'd go your whole life knowing something and never really think about it, in detail, "To my experience it's sort of like... we use words because we have to and they don't have to. I think, it's that most Halla see a Dalish clan as being a herd of Halla that bring a bunch of elves around with them out of love and duty, and to do difficult work, rather than the other way around. So they don't really worry much about how elves talk to one another, because it's not all that important."

He paused, groping for the words. The fire crackled and spat in the dampened ground, and the smell of roasting meat curled around them, no less potent than the woodsmoke. The birds around them are, slowly, beginning to lose their alarum and return to song.

"...I'm never a herdmaster, of course, but like anything else, I suppose."

"...Huh."

That's enough food for thought all at once that Myr lapses silent entirely, staring into the fire--staring through the fire--as he thinks on what Sorrel's said. To think of oneself--one's entire people--of standing in the same relation to halla that halla were to elves; to imagine how an entire species might reason among themselves without words, deciding when and where to travel as naturally as birds threading the sky on their way north in the winter.

Like deer making trails. Like a mage dreaming her way through the Fade. How much of what any of them were came from things below conscious thought--from instinct, from predators, from the shape of the land they walked?

He shakes himself from getting too deep on the question to turn the rabbit again.

"I think," softly, "it's a very great shame we never got a chance to know them, in the cities." Embers escape from the edge of the fire as a small log burns through; he takes up a stick to poke them back over the body of the smoldering glyph.

"I know we couldn't. It would be cruel to keep something wild inside the alienage's walls; they'd never choose it for themselves. And even if they did, the worst sort of shems would take them for meat." And what does that say about the People? "But anyone can see we've lost our place in the world and now I don't wonder that they're part of it."

"Of course they are. The Halla are the same blood as we are, descended out of Arlathan, and through The Dales. Even a city-born circle mage like you still carries it," Sorrel replies, flippant only because what is new sorrow for Myr was the flavor of bread and the coolness of water, taken in with mother's milk when he was yet a babe in arms, "Shivana."

He says it contemplatively, as if the notion had only occured to him. Sorrel tilts his head back, eyes far away, thinking, and for a few breaths the only movement in him is one thumb rubbing over a shiny spot on the cuff of his glove.

"That's a Dalish name, you know. It's Elvhen," There's a breath, the way he says it, that means something more than merely elven, as if there were some larger form of Elf than just elves, "Whoever named you, they weren't more than a generation in the city. I hear the like sometimes, in the alienage; the names blur in people's mouths, get more shem with time. Yours still has a meaning, so it has to be fresher."

He looks up at the way Sorrel says his name, hearing it for once like it belongs to someone else--someone who's better-suited to these woods, who long ago learned to hunt rabbits and commune with halla and walk more quietly between the branches.

The words that follow surprise him more than a little, because: "Dad," pause, "my father came south from Tevinter. With my older brother. They didn't talk much about family."

Of course, he'd always assumed his father for a child of some Tevene alienage, stretching back generations, much as his mother's side made claims of long residence in Hasmal. And sentiments in Hasmal being what they were about Tevinter, that little piece of family history was an assumption Myr was wholly comfortable leaving unexplored; it wasn't romantic or dramatic or exciting, but it was familiar.

This knocks the top off the whole thing.

It's enough to make Sorrel wonder, just for a moment, if he's somehow pronouncing it wrong. But then he snorts at himself and remembers; no, of course not. Of course, not.

"Duty," He tells Myr, in the shadow of that revelation. Even free elves, in Tevinter, were as trapped and kept low as in any southern alienage. Moreso, perhaps, because despite his practical ignorance, Sorrel felt quite certain that there were slave-takers who would take any excuse at all to hunt the alienages as happily as the rest of the world, should there be profit in it, "Shivanas is Duty. If you were wondering."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw: bad things happening to animals 8[

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject