The two of them being new to Scouting, they’re assigned some of the dull, seemingly-straightforward work. They’ve been sent to a small village northwest of Wildervale; unremarkable in every way, except that it sits just outside the contested territory, straddling the border between the Free Marches and imperial occupation. And the Marches, after all, are invested in not losing further ground than they already have.
So when there were rumours of Tevene soldiers in the area, nosing further south, and a village writing asking for assistance to punt them back where they came from, two scouts are sent to assess the shape of the problem first. Find out if it’s just reconnaissance, or a real push from the army and worth summoning reinforcements from Forces… or perhaps just local bogeymen, children’s stories run amok.
After gathering townspeople gossip (“I saw them by the old mill”, “No, there were Vints across the river, I was sure of it, in the thickest part of the forest”), the two women have been tromping around in the woods trying to find them. Astrid is cheerfully at home in the wilderness, and over the course of their journey, keeps shooting curious looks at the other woman’s longbow. It’s a gorgeous thing and she’s eventually going to lose the internal battle and just ask to hold it. Hers, strapped to her back, is its exact inverse: ugly-looking but sturdy, powerful.
They’ve been suffering long hours of damp hiking through the forest, one soggy morning camping, staring at potential tracks and trampled bushes and trying to make sense of it. And it had almost seemed worth giving up on and turning back, until one day they finally came across an abandoned camp: the small group of soldiers, evidently, haven’t been working too hard on hiding their passage.
Sifting through the debris, Astrid finds a square-shaped imperial tesserae coin. She scrutinises the unfamiliar piece of metal, then eventually tosses it in Vega’s direction.
“So, is this like, a problem for you,” she starts, just ripping loose the question she’s been wanting to ask, “going against your own people?”
At first the hike is fun and interesting, in a quaint way. Vega amuses herself by pretending they are completing a great pilgrimage together, maybe going to Denerim to touch the Birth Rock, something she has imagined herself doing many times before. By the third or fourth hour she's tiring, wondering aloud why they couldn't bring horses with them, or have ridden on the griffons to some place roughly nearby—that seems like the smarter move, doesn't it—but Astrid won't indulge her.
So they hike. It is damp. It isn't very warm. There are bugs everywhere, and Vega is starting to hate this stupid, miserable forest, its dead ends and places that all look the same. She hasn't said anything since the morning but she's clearly stewing away, cheeks flushed with exertion, eyes sometimes watering (she wipes them on the back of her arm when she thinks Astrid isn't looking).
This is a job, after all, and she said that she'd do it. It has to be done well. The Scoutmaster definitely already hates her, so she needs to deliver. There is a great swell of unfairness stuck in her throat, a big, terrible lump.
Finding the abandoned camp should be a relief but Vega's expression doesn't shift. She sniffs wetly and wipes her palms off on her trousers with great distaste.
(Does Astrid even sweat? She looks so at ease, like she does this every day. In fact, considering her appearance, she probably does.)
Clearing her throat Vega says petulantly, "If it were a problem, I wouldn't be here."
But this is hardly mission-relevant. She is carefully circling in the camp, craning her neck to look for prints in the dirt. "How are we supposed to find them from here? I doubt they'll come back." For one, they left little more than rubbish behind.
“But it looks like they left in a hurry. They’ve not even doused the fire properly.” Astrid’s poking around in the remains of their campfire, hunkered down beside it: it’s dead by now, but there’s the faintest lingering heat in the embers. An abandoned tin cup for drinking water. Some half-eaten food trodden into the dirt.
Sitting on her heels, watching Vega prowl around the edges of the camp, she scrutinises the ground and then points: there’s some wetter earth from where a bucket been carelessly knocked over, more drinking water spilled. Faint bootprints, leading westward. It feels like a fishing line going taut, their quarry hauling them in that direction.
The Vints were, technically, in enemy territory. Why hadn’t they fully broken down their camp? What took them away in such a rush?
“Thataway. They can’t be that far off.” She sizes up Vega critically, then, “You’re gonna have to stop stepping on all the twigs, Vee, they’ll hear us coming for a mile.”
"I was about to say that," mutters Vega half-heartedly, toeing at the fire remnants with her arms folded tightly across herself. She isn't doing a very good job at scouting. But Astrid, skirting around the campsite on light, efficient feet, is doing all of the work for them both so perhaps she shouldn't bother. There isn't anybody around to show off in front of, why is she trying so hard?
She feels righteous when she sees, in that same direction, branches broken off of a tree. Somebody barged through them, carving themselves a path.
Before she can point them out, she feels a prickle of irritation and embarrassment both steal over her; her ears go red and she blinks, her eyes wide. She says, clipped, "We are in a forest. The ground is mostly twigs, so I don't know what you want me to do about that —
It’s only two syllables, it’s not like Vega needs to cut that down even more,
but Astrid takes that in bemused stride, a woman who habitually shortens names out of automatic comradely chumminess, whether wanted or no. She straightens back to her full height and rejoins Vega again, cheerfully heedless of any knives seething in the other woman’s tone.
“I didn’t hear your voice in that crystal chatter the other day, the one about nicknames or codenames. If you had to pick one, what would you pick?”
"No." And this is a catch-all no, applicable to every question.
But Vega is aware that she sounds stubborn and childish saying it and folds her arms across her chest self-consciously, disrupting the smooth sling of her bow across her body. She lifts up her chin, gesturing with her head. She holds her breath for five before she speaks.
Calmly, "We're not here to play question games, Astrid Runasdotten, we're here to work."
And we are going this way, in the same direction as that nod. Vega is starting to walk. She says over her shoulder, "If we don't make haste, we will lose them. I'm sure you would enjoy tracking them down again and following their footprints all over the forest, but I have other things I could be doing."
“Like what?” —is another question well-suited for a question game, asked with still completely undaunted cheerfulness. But Astrid falls in line behind the other woman, and they make good progress through the woods following this last portion of the trail.
And it doesn’t take too long before those tracks lead them to… a quaint cottage nestled away in a deep part of the woods, off the beaten path. Its shutters are oddly closed despite the daytime, but the roof is recently-thatched, as if some strapping soldier had perhaps climbed up on a ladder to mend it recently. There’s even a thread of smoke merrily wending its way from a chimney. There are flowerboxes affixed to the fence outside, now sitting dead waiting for spring.
When Vega comes to a halt, Astrid collides with her before coming to a stop. Then she leans up on tiptoe to scrutinise the cottage over the other woman’s shoulder.
“Hm,” she says. She’s staring at that chimney. The building’s small. Only big enough for one person to live, really. But the tracks clearly lead right to its front door.
“They can’t all still be in there. There’s no room.”
Vega doesn't answer and they trek through the forest together more quietly because now she is thinking very hard about where her feet go, whether or not they could come down on a stick and break it. This is what Astrid wanted her to do and so Astrid can't be mad at her about it.
The tiny little cottage makes her stop. Astrid bumps into her. They both readjust, craning their necks to see the cottage better but that doesn't stop it from being exactly that: a cottage. Presumably with people inside (though it looks so tiny she can't imagine a single person being able to bear living there for very long). She looks to her left, then her right. There is nothing else immediately in sight.
Vega is frowning. "Surely they don't think we're going to go up and knock on the front door?"
She reaches back and touches the staff on her back, starting to bring it forward.
“The whole thing? With magic? What, just like that?” There’s a mild trepidation in Astrid’s voice; not outright horror, she’s seen some magic conducted by the shamans and augurs back home, but it’s of a different stripe and far less explosive.
“We don’t know for sure there’s not some civilian insi—”
As if to prove the point, the cottage door opens. Astrid makes a startled noise and immediately drops in a rustle of leaves, dragging Vega with her, trying to still peer through a bramble bush.
The figure — an old woman, it seems? — is slowly and jerkily emptying various kitchen leavings into the garden for compost, old bones and rinds, probably just puttering around on domestic errands. Her head wrapped in a deep-cowled shawl, it’s oddly hard to see her face, but — is she wrapped in a Tevene cloak?
“They must’ve visited her,” Astrid whisper-hisses into Vega’s hair. “We should knock, ask for information.”
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vega » the woods are lovely, dark and deep.
So when there were rumours of Tevene soldiers in the area, nosing further south, and a village writing asking for assistance to punt them back where they came from, two scouts are sent to assess the shape of the problem first. Find out if it’s just reconnaissance, or a real push from the army and worth summoning reinforcements from Forces… or perhaps just local bogeymen, children’s stories run amok.
After gathering townspeople gossip (“I saw them by the old mill”, “No, there were Vints across the river, I was sure of it, in the thickest part of the forest”), the two women have been tromping around in the woods trying to find them. Astrid is cheerfully at home in the wilderness, and over the course of their journey, keeps shooting curious looks at the other woman’s longbow. It’s a gorgeous thing and she’s eventually going to lose the internal battle and just ask to hold it. Hers, strapped to her back, is its exact inverse: ugly-looking but sturdy, powerful.
They’ve been suffering long hours of damp hiking through the forest, one soggy morning camping, staring at potential tracks and trampled bushes and trying to make sense of it. And it had almost seemed worth giving up on and turning back, until one day they finally came across an abandoned camp: the small group of soldiers, evidently, haven’t been working too hard on hiding their passage.
Sifting through the debris, Astrid finds a square-shaped imperial tesserae coin. She scrutinises the unfamiliar piece of metal, then eventually tosses it in Vega’s direction.
“So, is this like, a problem for you,” she starts, just ripping loose the question she’s been wanting to ask, “going against your own people?”
no subject
So they hike. It is damp. It isn't very warm. There are bugs everywhere, and Vega is starting to hate this stupid, miserable forest, its dead ends and places that all look the same. She hasn't said anything since the morning but she's clearly stewing away, cheeks flushed with exertion, eyes sometimes watering (she wipes them on the back of her arm when she thinks Astrid isn't looking).
This is a job, after all, and she said that she'd do it. It has to be done well. The Scoutmaster definitely already hates her, so she needs to deliver. There is a great swell of unfairness stuck in her throat, a big, terrible lump.
Finding the abandoned camp should be a relief but Vega's expression doesn't shift. She sniffs wetly and wipes her palms off on her trousers with great distaste.
(Does Astrid even sweat? She looks so at ease, like she does this every day. In fact, considering her appearance, she probably does.)
Clearing her throat Vega says petulantly, "If it were a problem, I wouldn't be here."
But this is hardly mission-relevant. She is carefully circling in the camp, craning her neck to look for prints in the dirt. "How are we supposed to find them from here? I doubt they'll come back." For one, they left little more than rubbish behind.
no subject
Sitting on her heels, watching Vega prowl around the edges of the camp, she scrutinises the ground and then points: there’s some wetter earth from where a bucket been carelessly knocked over, more drinking water spilled. Faint bootprints, leading westward. It feels like a fishing line going taut, their quarry hauling them in that direction.
The Vints were, technically, in enemy territory. Why hadn’t they fully broken down their camp? What took them away in such a rush?
“Thataway. They can’t be that far off.” She sizes up Vega critically, then, “You’re gonna have to stop stepping on all the twigs, Vee, they’ll hear us coming for a mile.”
no subject
She feels righteous when she sees, in that same direction, branches broken off of a tree. Somebody barged through them, carving themselves a path.
Before she can point them out, she feels a prickle of irritation and embarrassment both steal over her; her ears go red and she blinks, her eyes wide. She says, clipped, "We are in a forest. The ground is mostly twigs, so I don't know what you want me to do about that —
"And it's Vega."
Not Vee. Never Vee!
no subject
It’s only two syllables, it’s not like Vega needs to cut that down even more,
but Astrid takes that in bemused stride, a woman who habitually shortens names out of automatic comradely chumminess, whether wanted or no. She straightens back to her full height and rejoins Vega again, cheerfully heedless of any knives seething in the other woman’s tone.
“I didn’t hear your voice in that crystal chatter the other day, the one about nicknames or codenames. If you had to pick one, what would you pick?”
no subject
But Vega is aware that she sounds stubborn and childish saying it and folds her arms across her chest self-consciously, disrupting the smooth sling of her bow across her body. She lifts up her chin, gesturing with her head. She holds her breath for five before she speaks.
Calmly, "We're not here to play question games, Astrid Runasdotten, we're here to work."
And we are going this way, in the same direction as that nod. Vega is starting to walk. She says over her shoulder, "If we don't make haste, we will lose them. I'm sure you would enjoy tracking them down again and following their footprints all over the forest, but I have other things I could be doing."
no subject
And it doesn’t take too long before those tracks lead them to… a quaint cottage nestled away in a deep part of the woods, off the beaten path. Its shutters are oddly closed despite the daytime, but the roof is recently-thatched, as if some strapping soldier had perhaps climbed up on a ladder to mend it recently. There’s even a thread of smoke merrily wending its way from a chimney. There are flowerboxes affixed to the fence outside, now sitting dead waiting for spring.
When Vega comes to a halt, Astrid collides with her before coming to a stop. Then she leans up on tiptoe to scrutinise the cottage over the other woman’s shoulder.
“Hm,” she says. She’s staring at that chimney. The building’s small. Only big enough for one person to live, really. But the tracks clearly lead right to its front door.
“They can’t all still be in there. There’s no room.”
no subject
The tiny little cottage makes her stop. Astrid bumps into her. They both readjust, craning their necks to see the cottage better but that doesn't stop it from being exactly that: a cottage. Presumably with people inside (though it looks so tiny she can't imagine a single person being able to bear living there for very long). She looks to her left, then her right. There is nothing else immediately in sight.
Vega is frowning. "Surely they don't think we're going to go up and knock on the front door?"
She reaches back and touches the staff on her back, starting to bring it forward.
"I could level it."
no subject
“We don’t know for sure there’s not some civilian insi—”
As if to prove the point, the cottage door opens. Astrid makes a startled noise and immediately drops in a rustle of leaves, dragging Vega with her, trying to still peer through a bramble bush.
The figure — an old woman, it seems? — is slowly and jerkily emptying various kitchen leavings into the garden for compost, old bones and rinds, probably just puttering around on domestic errands. Her head wrapped in a deep-cowled shawl, it’s oddly hard to see her face, but — is she wrapped in a Tevene cloak?
“They must’ve visited her,” Astrid whisper-hisses into Vega’s hair. “We should knock, ask for information.”