this can still happen anywhere.

[ungovernable]

WHO: Benevenuta Thevenet, Nerva Lecuyer, Alistair Theirin
WHAT: Puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy.
WHEN: Prior to Serpent of Nevarra.
WHERE: Skyhold.
NOTES: If this post ends up needing a warning let's all blame MJ. Also, please feel free to assume that if your character was going to get a puppy, they can have picked them up or made arrangements to do so later - these are just getting logs because Benevenuta is a terrible person.

( NERVA )

They don't make scheduled arrangements, no, nothing so ... organised. Only Benevenuta had suggested that they might play chess, and Nerva had failed to object to it, and so they do, at approximately the same time and in the same place each week. Incidentally, really, only Benevenuta has been known to murmur an apology when it isn't quite the same time, or tap her fingers against the edge of the table and decline offers of an alternate partner when it's Nerva that fails to present herself at the not actually agreed upon hour.

Nerva is not late; Benevenuta is early, her new lapdog making truth out of the designation, a much smaller creature nestled in beside.

( ALISTAIR )

Tracking down Alistair requires a bit more effort. She carries the pup in her arms, Husband trotting obediently along at her heels, skittering this way and that when the rustle of Benevenuta's skirts threatens to entangle her short limbs. When she finds him, he would not be unwise to find the way her smile broadens when her gaze settles on him just a little bit worrying.

"Alistair," she says, almost sweetly, "are you much for dogs?"

He's Fereldan. This is barely a question.

Comments

[keeperofmagi]

She is rarely late. Not out of any sort of intention, exactly, but chess has become part of her routine, and Nerva was nothing if not precise with her schedule. So she arrives at exactly the same time that she usually does when other duties don't hold her up..

"Councillor," she murmurs as she sits. It's how she says hello. Usually then she silently arranges the board, but today she stopped before she had even fully say down, frowning at the... animal in Benevenuta's lap.

"...You have a dog," she states the obvious.

[byblow]

"I was raised by dogs," Alistair says.

It's an old joke, and one he puts much less energy into embellishing details for these days, but there is a kernel of truth—it's a more personal and more accurate answer than I love dogs, although he does, in the ways that only someone who grew up sleeping in a pile of them for warmth and having his ears licked until he fell asleep ever could. He loves dogs more than any other Ferelden who has never actually owned one, probably.

But her smile is a little bit worrying, yes. He had been leaning on a makeshift fence and watching a pitiful spar, but he turns to give her his full attention out of instinctive self-defense. He looks at her companions, first the larger, then the smaller.

His eyes narrow.

"Big dogs," he clarifies, to be safe. "Hunting dogs. War dogs."