open: mabari crawl.

[cozen]

WHO: Open (with a closed starter)
WHAT: A team takes dog sleds into Ferelden's snowy southern reaches to procure an antidote to poison. So: a Balto knock-off and a game-canon body heat meme.
WHEN: Haring 9:46 (pre-dream plot, so no need to take it into account)
WHERE: Southern Ferelden
NOTES: OOC post. There's a closed starter for people who signed up to talk to the herbalist, but otherwise this is open to anyone, make-your-own-adventure style.

The team's journey takes them from Winter's Breath, in the southern foothills of the Frostback Mountains, to the even-more-southern foothills, just north of where the map they've been given fades into ambiguity and a few depictions of enormous, cold-hardy beasts that may or may not truly exist. There's a smaller village there—Talon Point, named for a jagged rock formation in the surrounding mountains, under the protection of the Bann of Winter's Breath—that serves as a waypoint for traders and travelers to and from Orlais during the few months a year the mountains are traversable and the rest of the year as a conduit for trade with the Avvar and Chasind.

Other than the map, their guides are the dogs themselves. The lead dog for each sled team comes from a locally-bred line of particularly fluffy mabari. They're clever and communicative—albeit a bit less affectionate and more stubborn with these strangers than with their currently-absent masters—and used to making this journey. They know the way to Talon Point; it's a cold, snowy journey that requires making camp in the woods at least once, but otherwise, it's a straightforward trip.

The local accommodations are not much to speak of. With the inn shut up for the winter, the only place anyone can offer them to sleep is a barn. But it does provide a place to come back to, between bouts of splitting up to seek out the herbalist, who lives to the west and further up the mountains, or fanning out to the east to gather eshimeric. It's a reddish lichen that can be found growing in small quantities in the cracks and crevices of rocks, if they aren't covered in snow or if the snow is knocked away. Scraping together enough to allow for one dose and one do-over will take several days of dedicated searching.

The landscape they're searching is inhospitable, to put it lightly: deep canyons with narrow paths carved into their walls just asking for someone to nearly fall off the edge, pockets of dense woods that are difficult to traverse and easy to get lost in, expanses of barren land with no shelter from the wind at all, and frozen rivers and lakes which, of course, may not fully support the weight of someone trying to cross them. The sparse wildlife is mostly typical of the region, but now and then there's something—maybe a wolf, maybe a rabbit—that's unusually aggressive and still showing lingering signs of the blight.

Comments

[heorte]

"The inns aren't always so eventful," Ellis tells him. The cow lips at his upturned palm, mild interest fading when it's clear Ellis has brought over nothing but himself for inspection.

"I think they'll think of us more kindly if we help with the farm work. We might need that, if it goes badly with the healer."

Such an optimist, Ellis is.

[acreage]

He breathes out. He'd sooner call Ellis a pragmatist, at least in this moment; it's not like he hasn't, too, considered the possibility that the healer won't want to help them.

"Do you think they might have an antidote recipe hidden up their sleeves?"

[heorte]

"I think there's a fair chance," comes the answer, good-natured around a smile as the cow lows, head swaying out towards Holden before butting back against Ellis' hand where it had come to rest on the edge of the stall. "But Fereldans can be...stubborn."

What an understatement.

[acreage]

"Really?"

Well, he probably wouldn't be much of a Holden if he ignored a cow for this long. So he stands, brushing off his pants, and comes to stand nearer Ellis.

As if in admission, and maybe it is, "I wouldn't mind doing a few things around here if it gets us in their good graces."

[heorte]

"Do you miss it?" counters Ellis, ceding space to allow the cow's attention to swing towards the newcomer. An assessment catches in his throat: She's a sweet little thing. Borrowed words, the burr of his father's voice coming forward clear as a bell despite how much time has passed.

They aren't here to do farm work. But what harm is it to split some between gathering eggs and mucking out stalls when they aren't trying to pry information from an ornery healer. Either way it goes, Ellis assumes they won't be here too long.

[acreage]

Slowly, staying within the cow's line of sight, he reaches out a hand. Rests it near her snout at first, then starts rubbing between her eyes, higher up on her head, gently. The bristles of her face are familiar against his palm in a way he'd forgotten.

Do you miss it?

"No," he says, watching the animal. Imagining endless skies, heads of wheat stretching to the horizon, dark forests thick with underbrush, red-gold leaves making mounds every autumn: "This isn't my life anymore."

And then he looks to Ellis sideways, wry.

"Which is another way of saying I'm out of practice. At least you're around to know what you're doing."

[heorte]

What a familiar sentiment.

No, this is not Holden's life anymore. It certainly isn't Ellis' life, even if there's next to no one around to frown over a Warden with a quiet farm of their own. There are things that severe a person from what came before.

It's hard to tell what that might have been for Holden. Surely it happened before he arrived here, because Ellis can't imagine Holden's the type to be deterred from a goal after one night in a house with a murderous old man.

"You're not doing such a bad job," Ellis counters after a moment. "She seems to like you well enough."

It helps that Holden isn't a fool about his approach. Ellis has known more than one person unable to grasp how to deal with any animal, even one as docile as this cow.

"Though maybe we leave the milking to someone else, rather than gamble on your muscle memory."

[acreage]

The day Holden ran away from home was the day that he'd known, somewhere in his heart, that he could never come back. He didn't understand it at first; the shame of failure had made him literally believe he couldn't show his face in Montana again. He'd run off-planet, as far as Saturn and the stations of the outer planets, only kept occasional contact with Mother Elise.

Visiting the farm again more recently had helped him understand. His family would've welcomed him home to stay, if he'd wanted it, but he's too different now from the boy who'd been brought up to save the land. His horizons are wider, his heart elsewhere. What he wants to protect is so much bigger than a plot of green space, now.

But Ellis makes him laugh, makes it easy to shake off that line of thought.

"If I couldn't milk a cow anymore, I wouldn't deserve to call myself a Montana native." Imagine the shame. "I'll give it a try."

[heorte]

A tip of his head to the stool set outside the stall, stepping aside to allow Holden access.

"There's always the goats," Ellis tells him, as if in consolation. "Or gathering eggs. There's some challenge in getting past chickens."

A loose definition of "some," maybe.

[acreage]

Well, alright then. There's a bucket by the stool too, and he picks both up.

"I'm expecting you to protect us from the chickens," he says, would-be seriously. "I wouldn't like getting on the bad side of them."

Opening the stall poses its own challenge — namely, a large, affectionate cow eager to get out to her new friends. She moves to squeeze right out almost as soon as Holden opens the latch, snuffling at his arm, and then making for Ellis.

[heorte]

They're lucky that she has no designs on finding her way further than Ellis. Losing a cow would be a whole other difficulty for the Diplomacy office. Instead, the cow seems content to butt her head against his chest, rumble in contentment.

The aforementioned chickens scatter further towards the edges of the barn, scandalized.

"Interesting method so far," Ellis comments, easing to the side, one hand running down the cow's warm neck, encouraging her to hold her place. "A technique from Montana?"

[acreage]

"You're being a distraction," he counters, as if it's Ellis's fault this cow has adopted him.

So maybe it's not surprising that, once he sets up the stool and pail, he takes a step back and gestures for Ellis to sit.

"I think she's made what she wants pretty clear."

[heorte]

"You're hedging," Ellis says, good-natured as he gives the cow one last pat and moves round to settle himself onto the stool.

There's a moment of real dissonance, considering the task at hand. Whatever he's said, it has still been years since the last time he milked a cow. It's been somewhat outside the realm of possibility in the middle of war and the Wardens falling apart in every direction.

"You should talk to her," Ellis suggests, as he begins to work. "I'd heard that's a help."

From where, well. That's surely not relevant.

[acreage]

As Ellis moves to the stool, Holden similarly re-positions himself around the cow, closer to her neck, her head, her line of sight.

"I have," he says dryly, "actually done this before."

Talking to him about how to handle a cow like he's some amateur?? But he obliges, making soft, soothing sounds with a hand on her neck, murmuring about nothing in particular at all. Though he does pause to ask, looking at Ellis from over her head,

"From one of the barns you've slept in?"

Where Ellis has heard, that is.

[heorte]

From my father, Ellis thinks to say. Instead there's quiet as he scoots the stool closer, makes minor, finnicky adjustments to his posture, gives a few brief pulls on the teats, testing the flow of the milk before pulling the pail round and setting to work.

His left hand is no good for this work anymore. The skewed bend of his fingers don't manage the work as gracefully as they once had. Even the minor adjustments don't make up for the fact that he can't quite make a proper fist, and the resulting stream of milk is weak until he manages to contort his left hand well enough to manage the task better.

"I'm Fereldan," Ellis says, voice dipping quieter over words that may mean nothing at all to Holden. He doesn't know about Montana, but he imagines it similarly to the Bannorn. Rural. Stretches of fields, held by people ready to dig their heels in and argue their way through matters large and small. "I remember a little, from when I was a boy. Some tips stuck."

Fact delivered like the withdrawal of the tide, revealing just a little bit more than what existed above the water line. (Even if it is only a tell because Holden is a Rifter, less likely to hear the tell of Ellis' homeland in his speech.)