"No, Carla's sweet on one of the Chantry sisters," Yseult replies, as if it's well-established fact, "It's Helena Montez who has a man on one of the ships, the Dandelion from Treviso."
She does this sometimes, offers up details of their neighbors' lives that no one has ever mentioned, confirms or denies gossip as if she has some certain insight. There's never any use asking how she knows, she just saw or heard or can tell, somehow. It doesn't take these powers of observation to tell Darras is trying to dodge the subject. She slips a hand beneath his elbow, wraps her arm through his and presses their shoulders and sides closer together, silent for a minute.
It was easy at first, to leave the world behind. Hiding away in the cottage, the fields behind and beach below, the village down the way with its port just large enough to bring snippets of news every few weeks and otherwise consumed with its own small dramas. Burying herself in learning to plant and grow and harvest, to keep chickens, and goats, and a milk cow, to mend nets and knit socks, to bake and churn and on and on. There's always some new task to master, some bit of mundane domesticity to focus on, some new callous to replace the old ones, each embedding her more and more firmly into this life, further and further from what was. But as the novelty wore off, it grew harder again. A trip to Antiva City for his birthday--her own idea--brought the world rushing back in with its stories of rifts and Heralds, demons and darkspawn on top of the usual troubles. Every visit to the village after that all she could hear was the crier with his news, the rumors around the tavern, sailors trading dark stories on the quay. She must have packed and unpacked her bag a dozen times, burned twice as many notes of apology, sat awake on the edge of their bed night after night watching Darras sleep, unsure if she was praying for the will to leave or to stay.
In the end it was Sarra she told him about instead, her knives and picks and poisons re-buried in a corner of the new root cellar they dug out that spring, quickly piled over with sacks of potatoes and turnips and onions. She let the world shrink as their family grew and the farm with it, and it got easy again. It would be easy now, if it were still Orlais the stories talked of, the Anderfels, Nevarra, Kirkwall. But it's crept closer while they weren't looking, and Seleny isn't as far off as either of them would like to pretend. If the war comes to Antiva City who's to say it won't stretch up the coast to them? Wars spiral out of control, set brigands and bandits loose on the countryside. She knows as well as anyone the toll it can take on small lives far from the front lines.
"We should be prepared," she says, "Just in case. Avolasca's only a few days west."
no subject
She does this sometimes, offers up details of their neighbors' lives that no one has ever mentioned, confirms or denies gossip as if she has some certain insight. There's never any use asking how she knows, she just saw or heard or can tell, somehow. It doesn't take these powers of observation to tell Darras is trying to dodge the subject. She slips a hand beneath his elbow, wraps her arm through his and presses their shoulders and sides closer together, silent for a minute.
It was easy at first, to leave the world behind. Hiding away in the cottage, the fields behind and beach below, the village down the way with its port just large enough to bring snippets of news every few weeks and otherwise consumed with its own small dramas. Burying herself in learning to plant and grow and harvest, to keep chickens, and goats, and a milk cow, to mend nets and knit socks, to bake and churn and on and on. There's always some new task to master, some bit of mundane domesticity to focus on, some new callous to replace the old ones, each embedding her more and more firmly into this life, further and further from what was. But as the novelty wore off, it grew harder again. A trip to Antiva City for his birthday--her own idea--brought the world rushing back in with its stories of rifts and Heralds, demons and darkspawn on top of the usual troubles. Every visit to the village after that all she could hear was the crier with his news, the rumors around the tavern, sailors trading dark stories on the quay. She must have packed and unpacked her bag a dozen times, burned twice as many notes of apology, sat awake on the edge of their bed night after night watching Darras sleep, unsure if she was praying for the will to leave or to stay.
In the end it was Sarra she told him about instead, her knives and picks and poisons re-buried in a corner of the new root cellar they dug out that spring, quickly piled over with sacks of potatoes and turnips and onions. She let the world shrink as their family grew and the farm with it, and it got easy again. It would be easy now, if it were still Orlais the stories talked of, the Anderfels, Nevarra, Kirkwall. But it's crept closer while they weren't looking, and Seleny isn't as far off as either of them would like to pretend. If the war comes to Antiva City who's to say it won't stretch up the coast to them? Wars spiral out of control, set brigands and bandits loose on the countryside. She knows as well as anyone the toll it can take on small lives far from the front lines.
"We should be prepared," she says, "Just in case. Avolasca's only a few days west."