What Comes Due | Open (with prompt for Myr)

[writteninblood]

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.

Comments

[nadasharillen]

Air and quiet had sounded perfect. Nari had almost forgotten, in the constant rhythm of daily work and sheltering from the horrifying winter sleet, that there was an outside Kirkwall. She looks bright and lively out here, and is accoutered much as Sorrel is although the bow she carries is largely perfunctory and she's wearing boots.

Not all that worried about scaring away game—it's largely already away—she whistles thoughtlessly as they walk, some mix of calling back to the few birds flitting about the stark landscape and snatches of songs blending into each other one after the next. She stretches her arms above her head with a contented noise when the sun peeks out and laughs through her nose.

"I think I forgot I was alive."

[writteninblood]

"Remember Halla, Nari. Remember Aravels? Remember the way they used to sing when it was tanning day, down by the water? I'm a pretty useless trade-in for a proper Keeper, but even I can't let you forget you're still Dalish, under all this Inquisition crap," He gestures at the shadow of the walls still visible in peeks and glimpses beyond the trees behind them, himself full of smiles in the sharp, cold sunlight, "You know, before I came to Kirkwall, I thought all alienage elves were stupid, or crazy."

Sorrel says it conversationally, because he knows Nari will take it in the spirit it was meant. Irreverence was the order of the day, and if Sorrel was any kind of Keeper, even only an excuse for one, he was nothing at all like his mother.

"...And now I know the flat-ears aren't stupid at all— just crazy. You live inside walls all your life, and all those Shems pushing at you and mucking with the Fade until your own brain starts to boil out of self-defense."

[nadasharillen]

She screws up her face as if she's making immense effort to think.

"Halla... Aravels..." She shrugs with a grin: nope, got nothin', and then turns to walk backwards for a bit as surely as she had been the right way around.

"You're probably right. After all, I got used to it and we've only been in among shem'len for..." Nari looks up for a moment, counting, and then stops moving to whistle lowly. "Three and a half years."

[writteninblood]

"Well, thank you for that, now I feel dirty," Sorrel replies, primly, and holds back a loose runner of creeping fig for her to pass, not that she needs it, "Three and a half years and here we stand. I feel less vhen, just thinking about it."

Three and a half years... Had it been that long, really? It seemed to short a time, for all that had happened, too small a number for the lifetime that stood between them and the selves of that past. Sorrel could feel his shoulders trying to duck forward at the memory of who he'd been. Sina's ghost stood like fog around them, and he shivered and let the vines fall.

"Rabbit, this time of year? It's been a long time since I actually shot something that wasn't made of straw, so... don't laugh at me, when I miss."

[nadasharillen]

"Me? Laugh at a clanmate for missing?" Nari snorts with amusement. She feels it there, in the woods. The missing space. Especially with Sorrel. But the sun is bright, and Sina would have been enjoying the day, and she'll enjoy the day.

"I'm the worst shot of Dahlasanor. The only reason they kept me as a hunter is because there were only three people in the entire clan, and I track well enough to make up for it." It's not necessary to say that she still ranks well enough among the Inquisition's archers, but of the Dalish? Nooo.