faderift | MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

After dark--with the sun gone down, and the washing up done, and everyone put to bed and order restored to the cottage--that's when Yseult and Darras go out, and sit together in the cool of the night, and listen to the sound of the ocean.

The waves at the bottom of the sea cliff toss themselves tirelessly against the shore, and even from their high cliff, they can hear the noise, as regular as a heartbeat. It runs under the whole of their life, day in and day out, just as it did when they were here together only now and then, when it was just the two of them and the cottage was smaller, and emptier. The third time Darras had come home from sea and found Yseult at the table in the cottage, reading a book by lamplight, and she'd looked up almost absently and told him that she was staying, and Darras--consumed with loving her, with what that promise meant, with the little smile on her lips--had dropped his things on the floor and pushed her onto the table to kiss her, to take her, with the book dropped to the floor and the lamp pushed dangerous close to the edge.

Summers and winters and springtimes and harvests. And each time Darras closed the door behind him and took the path to the village wharf, it got harder, and harder, until he gave it up as well. And then there were more summers, and with them came Sarra, dark and mischievous with Yseult's eyes, and then Lir, a wild tumble of hair the color of Yseult's, and Darras' dark eyes. Two souls that are entirely their own, their faces and spirits all touched with bits of Darras and more bits of Yseult, which Darras loves.

Together at night they sit, always, on the bench beside the wall of the extra room. Darras had built it himself, nearly six years ago now, when Yseult told him she was pregnant. A room on the first floor, for them, and a loft above for the children when they were larger and could be trusted up and down a ladder. The glass in the little window over their bed is blue and green, precious and expensive and a pointless luxury. Yseult likes it, and that's good enough for him.

The bench faces the edge of the cliff, where the thin scrubby grass goes all the way to the rocky edge. In the dark, the sky is gray. When it's summer they can see the thin line of the sunlight on the horizon. In the winter, the sun sets too early, and they come outside to find the full velvet cloak of darkness around them.

It's too cold to be out here long. Darras takes his pipe from his mouth, and hands it over to Yseult, as he lets a stream of smoke out from between his lips.

"Looks like snow," he says, and gives a nod toward the sky.

Edited 2019-12-13 21:37 (UTC)

Yseult shakes a hand free of the sweater cuff she's tucked it into to reach out and take the pipe. It used to be his (the sweater; the pipe still is) until the stitching in the elbows gave out for the second time a few years ago and she shifted it into her side of the drawer, to be worn when pottering around the house on days like these, with no one but him and the children to notice the fraying collar or the snagged hem. It's big enough to pull over her knees as she sits curled up, but tonight her legs are folded cross-legged, her skirt tucked under to keep out the rising chill.

She's tilted against Darras's side, head on his shoulder, but picks it up to smoke. The pipe is his preference, not hers, but she likes the way the sweet-dark burn of it combines with the salt breeze and the smoke from the chimney above and the one on the smokehouse down the way, and the unplaceable scent in the air itself, as the clouds crowd in overheard, muting the sky.

"Smells like snow," she agrees, handing the pipe back. She stays upright, looking out across the water. Way down to the left are the lights from the village, just visible around the cliffs' edge.

"Carla," the baker's wife, "and Baldovini," the candlemaker, she tells him, voice soft, careful not to break the peace of the evening or to carry up to the little window in the loft where Sarra sometimes listens past her bedtime, "Were talking about trouble inland, around Gozzano and Avolasca. And the last few ships due from Seleny have never arrived. Not just here; I heard they never made it to Antiva City at all."

Edited 2019-12-20 00:45 (UTC)

He takes back the pipe, sets it between his teeth to hold it. Gives him something to focus on, beyond the promise of snow and the trouble that Yseult heard in the village. It feels far-off, farther even than the rime of light from the village.

If you put him in Antiva City, Darras knows he could still walk it, eyes closed or blindfolded or turned around and around and shoved off. And he loves it, in its way, color and riot and a thousand smells--just as he loves Llomerryn, in its way--but they're someone else's cities now. They don't belong to him. This--the cottage, the land, bracketed by the sea and the cliff, and on the other sides that rough tumble fence he has to put together again after every spring storm, or unruly goats wandering up from Braddock's farm down the way--even the village with its three shops and one tavern, market stalls and small lives--and the lives trusted to him, personally, the only three people he cares about. Yseult, Sarra, Lir. This is his. Beyond, it's all stopped mattering, softened to a darkness colored only by memory.

He lets out his breath, and pipesmoke with it, light gray on the dark of the sky.

"Oh, aye?" Casual, careful. If they wade too far into these waters, they will get dark, and murky. "I heard that Carla has a man on one of those ships. Meets him near five miles down the road when she says she's carrying bread to those Chantry sisters that live in the wood. No wonder she's thinking too much on 'em."

"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."

Darras' smile curls at the corners of his mouth, with his gaze fixed forward in the darkness. He pulls the pipe away so he can twist and lean down, press a kiss to the top of her head. That comes first. Of course Yseult knows more than him: about the news, about the village, about the goings-on and the trysts and the storylines all running beneath the surface. Darras likes to give her a name, sometimes, mention something in passing, and wait for Yseult to answer, absently, to counter him or correct him or (more often than not) just say something, some bit of information that she'd gleaned. She does it as easily as she picks burrs out of shirts, or peels the skin from the apple so that it's one long curl in the dirt.

But Yseult also pulls. If a burr were stuck, its barbs knotted around the threads of one of Lir's shirts, she'd keep working at it, pulling and twisting until she'd got it free. Darras would pick off the sharp bits and put the shirt on Lir. This won't hurt. There's worse than burrs, boyo. It's as like as Lir would never notice. Yseult wouldn't leave it.

So too with this. Darras puts the pipe back to his mouth and takes another pull.

"I'm prepared," he says, and he means: prepared to defend. He would do anything to protect his family. He doesn't need to say it. His sword, kept in the pocket back of the cupboard in their bedroom, wrapped in black cloth and tied up tight. He wouldn't even need a sword. "I know you are. Sitting up here, the world is far away. All of it. Bakers and candlers and chantry sisters and wars. If it comes here and touches our shore, we'll do for it. If it comes to that, we'll be all right. We survive."

Both of them, and their children with them. They've always survived. They always will.

Yseult sits with that for a moment, turning it over in her mind and worrying at it before she says, "No. We're not prepared. You haven't taken that sword out of the cupboard in two years," because of course she found it tucked away there one autumn when pulling out the heavy blankets and thick sweaters, studied it carefully and then put it and what it suggested away again without a word. "And I've done even less for longer. We're not risking our children on that when we've time to do more."

Edited 2019-12-29 03:54 (UTC)

"I could defend them," he counters, evenly. "Might not be pretty. But for them, I could. And for you, though you've never needed it. Doubt you would even now, no matter how long it's been."

The way she sometimes holds the shovel, or the carving-knife, or the axe they leave leaned up against the woodshed. The quick flick of her fingers, catching an errant gooseberry rolled off the table while baking pies. The way her eyes track the horizon, and a doorway before she enters a room, or leaves one of the shops. Quick, fleeting, nothing anyone but Darras would mark. And someday maybe Sarra and Lir would think it strange, that their mother can dodge pebbles chucked at her. Or maybe they'll think all mothers can do it. Maybe they'll read the trick as Darras and Yseult have always laid it out for them: a game, something to do while they're fishing down at the beach. Try to catch your mother off-guard. You can't.

He can feel the speed of Yseult's thoughts beside him. Turning over everything, playing out futures. She plots in a way that he doesn't. Maybe it's born of that same doggedness.

"What is it you would have us do?"

"Train," Yseult replies after another moment or two, unmoved by his insistence. Darras runs on passion, pride, and an overwhelming faith in the two of them, and she loves him for it. But facing the threats drawing near--magic, blight, chaos--isn't something she's willing to trust to heart alone. "Plan. And get more information."

Her hands have been bare for years, neither farm work nor small children much good for even simple jewelry. The ring he gave her in the village chantry on the hill with its heavy garnet hangs on a chain around her neck beside the arrowhead and an odd silver band she used to wear on her first finger, simple in design but unusual in its construction, subtly notched and bent like it's meant to fit into a missing partner. She used to touch it more often, slipping a thumb through the band as they entered the tavern or greeted travelers on the road home in a way that looked absent except to Darras who knows she doesn't fidget. She stopped bothering with it in the village years ago, but she touches it now, through her sweater, a thumb pressing the metal to her sternum.

"We need to know what's coming. I'll go to Avolasca. You make sure the boat is packed with essentials and the children are ready if we need to go." Out the smuggler's tunnel hidden in the cellar, down to the cave at the base of the cliff where they moor the boat. It's not fit for a long journey over open water, but they can hug the coast to at least temporary safety if they must. "And talk to Yunes about sparring, he's still handy with a blade. I know if it comes you'll do everything you can, and so will I, but the last time I faced a mage I barely escaped, and I've never seen darkspawn. We're not taking any chances."

Training is one thing, planning another, gathering information a part of that. It all implies the future, something they'll do over the next fortnight. There's nothing unfinished about the plan that Yseult launches right into, more fully-fledged than Darras would have been able to form in the last few minutes. But this isn't the work of a few minutes. This is Yseult, having already thought of these things, having already marked out her path to Avolasca, made arrangements, picked old contacts out of the shelves of her memory and shook them out.

More than all that--

"You're leaving?" Darras pulls away from her a little so he can look around, slipping loose the circle of his arm about her shoulder.

"The day after tomorrow," Yseult confirms, "There's a wagon heading inland then, one of the Meridien's shipments. I'm going to ride with them part of the way." She lifts her arm to join his on the back of the bench, hand extended to brush the back of her knuckles along his cheek. "I'll only be gone a few days. We have to find out what's going on."

Younger, more stubborn, more selfish, he might have fought her. Flinched away from that touch, shoved to his feet and paced to the edge of the cliff to show how displeased he was. And he is displeased, because he's gotten spoiled, having her here with him, waking up with her every morning, or at least waking and knowing that she's somewhere nearby, that all he has to do is climb out of bed to find her at the table, or out in the vegetable patch, or fetching water from the well, or crawled up to the loft to lay with the children awhile before the day starts properly--all this domesticity, comfortable as the sweater of he's she's wearing--and now someone's putting holes in it, stretching it out, ruining what they've built.

Darras looks down at the ground. He doesn't shy away from her hand.

"Three days," he says, eventually. "I'll have everything here prepared in three days. And you'll bring back the news of what we're up against. Where are you thinking we'd go?" The boat he takes out to fish with is pulled up to the boathouse. The one in the cove is different, lither, not large enough to go out across the sea but large enough for the four of them, and Rosana, sleeping the days away as she does now. It will be seaworthy by tomorrow's sunrise. He'll make sure of it.

"I don't know," she admits, touching his jaw, hand turning to slide back and settle on his nape, thumb brushing the curve of his ear. "It will depend what I hear. I haven't been paying enough attention to know where would be safe. Maybe Treviso, first. Then Rivain, or Ferelden. We'll find somewhere, if we have to. We may not," she reminds, as nails card through the short hair at the scruff of his neck, "We may be just fine."

She tightens her grip and gives him a little shake. "Come on. Let's go in to bed. There's nothing we need do tonight."

He shakes his head, still not pulled free from her. The weight of her hand, the grip of it, lays a comforting weight. Not enough to dislodge what he's thinking.

"I'll see to the boat. Then I'll come in. It won't take long."

And it will be good, doing something with his hands. Climbing into bed now, with the end of all of this left lingering at the side--well, maybe he ought to. Enjoy what they have here and live in it, for at least another few hours. With Yseult away, knowing what she's off doing, playing out possibilities, it won't be the same.

He reaches up to put his hand over hers, hold it in place.

Yseult watches him gently as Darras makes the swing from dismissive to deeply serious with stomach-lurching speed. Her hand is still beneath his except for her thumb, free to stroke back and forth along his hairline. She knows the impulse, to go do everything that can be done right away, without a second wasted. The fear that tempts her to abandon their home on the slightest hint of a threat and bundle the children away to some remote mountain or cave or island no war will ever reach.

She exhales a long, slow breath that puffs and curls in the chilling air like the smoke from his pipe, forgotten on the arm of the bench. "If it won't take long, it can be done in the morning," she says, turning her hand to tug at his as she gets to her feet. "Come on, it's too cold to sleep alone."

He doesn't immediately give in, though he wants to. Maker, he wants to. It's in him to just stand up and go with her, let himself be pulled in. Forget what she's said, what's out there waiting for them, to raze this peace and spoil it all. They've had it for years, and it's been long enough and good enough that he's been able to pretend it could be forever.

The chill of it keeps him where he is a moment longer, sitting on the bench, ready to go off and start, prepare, do what he can to keep this at bay. Like he can build a barricade to protect them.

"You're good at this," he says. And it's a compliment. She always has been. Two things at once--two faces, even if she's got a true one underneath somewhere--never ruled by immediate passion but possessed of some tranquility even when she's at her angriest. It's a center that can't be broken, no matter what. And Darras is her opposite, volcanic and seething and itching to do something.

It's not what she expected him to say, that's clear from the bend in her brows and faint purse of her lips, quizzical and slightly--affectionately--exasperated. It makes her pause for a moment, tracking back the last few moments of conversation to try to figure out what he means, what she's good at. When an answer doesn't make itself clear she shrugs it off, and instead lifts her free hand to run over his hair again.

She steps up close until her knee is right against the edge of the seat between his own, and tips his face up, just looking at him for a long moment with his jaw in her palms. Then she leans down, resting her forehead against his and shutting her eyes. Her thumbs skim across his cheekbones, both of them this time, before she draws back just enough to press a kiss to his lips instead. "Alright," she says softly, "Come to bed when you're ready."

Edited 2020-01-09 03:30 (UTC)

Her kiss stays with him, after she's gathered his old sweater around herself and gone around the corner of the cottage, back inside. Darras taps his pipe against the side of the bench, and the burned-out tobacco drifts and clumps to the ground. Then he gets up, and starts toward the path.

Later, much later, but still before the sunrise, he comes to their room, smelling of cold and salt and the outside. The light that comes in their little window is gray, and the children are quiet in their loft overhead, deep in sleep. Even Rosana doesn't lift her head, tucked soundly away with her tail curled around herself. If Yseult is awake, she hasn't said anything, and Darras doesn't say anything to her, not yet. There's a kind of peace here that he doesn't want to disturb, not now that he knows how few of these moments that there are likely to be. He shrugs off his coat, and his sweater, and--still in trousers and cotton shirt, and the thick wool socks Yseult mends for him, by their little fire--he slips into bed beside her.

And it's quiet. If he listens, he can hear the cottage settling around them, a living thing--and the wind outside, and the sea, tossing itself against the beach, even more alive--and if he listens very hard, he can hear the children breathing, slow and even, from above. And that quiet hushed sound that is no sound at all: snow, outside. It had started hours ago. His boots are out in the main room, drying beside the embers of the fire.

He reaches out for Yseult, in the bed next to him, and pulls her close so he can put his nose in her hair, and hold her to him. And that's all, for a moment, at least. Just this. It's more than enough; if he could only keep it, just like this, it could always be enough.

Yseult lets him sleep, in the morning. But the children don't, too excited by the snow and determined to share it with him, even if that means waking him up with shouting and jumping. There is breakfast to be scarfed down, gloves and hats tracked to their hiding places, chores interrupted by snowball ambushes, snow forts and snowmen and snow sea monsters to be built, work finished in the mid-afternoon dusk, stew from the pot at the hearth, and early bedtimes, eyes closing well before stories are finished, a day gone by in a blink.

And after, in the red-orange dim of the banked coals, Yseult in his lap, arms around his neck and hips in his hands. Dozing in the crook of his shoulder, the scratchy wool blanket from the back of the couch pulled over until it slips off when he lifts her the few paces to their bed.

In the morning she's gone just like she said, and Edouard the horse with her, leaving a to-do list behind in her place. (She signed it 'love', at least. "And fix the front left shutter. Love, Y.") Three days, there and back.

Darras fixes the front left shutter on the first morning, right after he finds the note. Sarra climbs down from the loft first and volunteers her help, and Darras lets her, answers her when she asks where her mother's gone--away, to learn some news to bring home to us, but she'll come home again in three days.

There's follow-up questions from both of the children. Once Lir wakes up, sure and he asks the same, looking for his mother. The questions are simple. Where's she gone, will she bring back gifts, how long is three days, why did she take Edouard, what will Edouard eat, what will she eat--and with great patience, Darras answers these as well, mostly seriously, sometimes teasing. She'll eat Edouard--no, sorry, Edouard will eat her-- which makes Sarra and Lir shriek. Later that day, Darras is clearing snow from the path to the well and Sarra and Lir are throwing themselves into snowbanks, and pretending to be cannibal horses. There's nothing in the game that's a real threat. Nothing like what could be coming for them all.

He finishes Yseult's list. He takes the children with him to the village, and they shop for everything. Laying down supplies for the winter is what he says, if anyone asks, and that's enough to distract, get everyone talking about bad winters of the past, signs that point to this one being good or worse than those, what else he ought to be buying.

And on the third day, in the late afternoon, they're all three in the main room of the cottage. Sarra is reading out one of Yseult's books, and Lir is laying on his stomach in front of the fire, stretched out like Rosana. Everyone's socks and boots are standing around the grate to dry. The socks are hung on the mantle, dangling like weird garland. The hiss of steam rising from them is a gentle sound. Darras is at the table, carving new clothespins. He's the one that hears it first: horse-hooves, clopping up the path. He marks the sound, and sits to listen a moment before he gets to his feet and goes to the window.

MOD EVENT ↠ IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE

darras rivain

closed to yseult || this very domestic post-retirement au

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