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WHO: Cyril and Taashath
WHAT: Taashath and Cyril both partake in some comfort.
WHEN: Post Crow Plot
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: None. This, shockingly, will likely not end in nsfw land.

Cyril knew that the rescue had been successful thanks to Korrin. Merrick had woken and was recovering. He should feel better. There is relief there, of course, but he still felt so tight and uncomfortable. It was as if his body hadn't quite caught up with the news.

He was pretty good at pretending everything was all right though, and someone who looked at him casually probably wouldn't see the exhaustion that was threatening to take over. It helped that he covered dark circles with expert skill.

He wanted to check on Taashath to make sure that he was all right but more than that he just wanted to be around a comforting presence. Taashath felt solid, like a foundation to relax against. Cyril wanted to make sure all of his friends pieces were intact after battle as well, but he still felt guilty for wanting something to rely on. Who knew what state Taas was in?

When he saw Taashath he slid into his line of sight and waved in a contained motion. It was a visual tentative hello.

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Cyril considers Taas for a moment. "What about your life?" he asks. "I don't know much about the Qun, but I've heard you don't have families? Is that true?"

"Yeah, it's... similar. Just a little more extreme." Taas shifts a bit, smiling. If there was one thing good about the Qun, it was the child rearing - at least in his opinion.

"We don't know who our parents are. There's no marriage under the Qun and no personal choice in who you will create a child with. Our Tamassran - they're like priestesses - handle all the breeding. A father's duty ends at climax and a mother's at birth." He pauses a bit, checking to see if Cyril is getting it.

"Then the children are all put together in a group with other kids their age and raised by a Tamassran."

Cyril's brow raises a bit. It might sound sad to someone who had had a longer relationship with their parents. "So, you can probably get why I'm more attached to Merrick than to my mother?" he asked, because he wasn't sure if people always understood that to the fullest.

"Yeah, I do," he says softly, running his hand through Cyril's hair with a gentle touch. "I've always believed that the friends and family you are the people you choose, not the people you share blood with."

He briefly thinks of Ashaad, and he tries to not tighten his grip on the elf. No, back to the nice part. The feeling he had just a second ago.

"...I liked to protect the other kids. They called me 'Reth'."

Cyril notices the tightening and then pats Taas gently to help comfort him. "What does Reth mean?"

The qunari takes a breath and then tries to focus on the feeling of Cyril's heartbeat under his touch. Alive and warm; soothing.

"It literally means 'protect'," he says with a slight roll of his eyes at his own language's stupid rules. "Qunlat is very literal if you glance over it once, but underneath it are interwoven other meanings that can make a sentence mean a lot of things." Taas tries to think of a good example that would make sense to Cyril. "Like defransdim. It literally means intimate friends, but in Trade you call it balls." He'd get a kick out of that.

"It's why it's almost impossible for outsiders to master Qunlat, because you would have to have learned all those little nuances since you were a kid... and why it's hard for many Qunari to learn trade, because not being able to use the language the same way is shameful."

Cyril does chuckle a bit at the translation. He thinks about that for a moment. "I wonder if elves would have had the same problem," he says. "And now we've lost most of our language." He seems sad for a moment, but then recovers quickly because this isn't about him.

"Do you know any other languages?"

"I've always found it amazing that your people have managed to hold on to so much after being so broken apart," Taas says with a little hum, thoughtful. "Language might be lacking, but the connection is impressive. Stories, gods, your tattoo things. It must take a lot to keep things like that alive."

There's another shrug from the large qunari. "Just Qunlat, Trade and sign. It's a code for the deaf to speak, using hands - or rogues, for silent communication. I haven't had to learn anything else... Trade was necessary for Seheron."

Cyril perks up a little at the mention of sign. "You have a language that would be easier for you to communicate in?" he asks, curious about that idea. He always does feel a little worried about lighting and lip reading. Living in a castle can't be easy for that. "Can you teach me?"

Teaching is probably a good distraction too.

"I do," he says with an affectionate stroke of his hand over Cyril's head, fingers curling through the hair. "I rarely use it, since so few people know what it is."

Moving a bit, he sits up better so he can use his hands and Cyril can look at him at the same time. "I can try to teach you some, if you'd like? It's a little different from spoken words... each gesture means something, but you can also use the fingers to spell a single letter. Usually for names."

Moving one hand, he fingerspells C-y-r-i-l.

"That's your name."

Cyril watches Taas's fingers and then tries to copy the motion. He has to make Taas do it again to get it right and it's still awkward and slow, but he's trying.

"What about your name?"

Taas is patient and more than happy to do it over and over to show Cyril. Awkward and slow was fine. Nobody mastered a language in one day, and he could read 'Cyril' on the fingers most of the time he attempted it.

"My name? Well, 'Calm' would be this," he says and moves his hands down while spread apart and with the palms horizontal. It looked pretty much like a 'calm down' gesture. "...but since it's my name, Taas makes more sense and is easier to spell on the fingers."

T-a-a-s.

Cyril copies those signs carefully and then grins a bit. "Okay," he says. He signs his name again and then Taas's name. "Right?" he asks. At least he remembered all of the right letters.

The warrior looks at the signs fondly and nods. "That's good!" With time, the elf could be doing those movements quicker and quicker until it flowed as swift as words.

It was a nice thought, to have Cyril speak to him in sign. The people he knew that spoke sign in Skyhold were less than he could count on one hand, after all.

"Try this one..." he makes another few movements, including putting his index finger on the back of one hand and lifting that hand's index finger up.

Cyril watches Taas's hands closely and the copies the movement. He's getting more used to using his hands this way so he copies it easier but it's still awkward. "What does it mean?"

"It means 'you have a hot dick," he says with a laugh, giving Cyril an amused look. Learning should be fun, right?

Cyril laughs too. "I'll have to remember that one for later," he says. Any other time he would have signed it again and used it to try to get things more heated between them, but that negates the point of today.

"How do you say 'you have a nice smile?'" he asks, because that seems much safer.

Taas shows Cyril how to sign that, and adds simpler signs such as 'hi' and 'yes' and little things like that. Easy but important.

"Now try 'My name is Cyril'," the warrior instructs, letting the elf figure out of to put that together.

Cyril has to think about that from the signs that he's learned in this short time. He manages my and name but then stops. "Is there a sign for 'is?'" he asks.

He hasn't fully grasped the overall concept of a gesture based language. He will be able to get how the language works quickly. He already has a nice background for that considering how he understands the difference between the scattering of ancient language phrases the Dalish know and the phrases that are spoken when you translate to Trade, but right now he's thinking of sign as a word-for-word translation.

He smiles at that and shakes his head gently. "No, not really. Sign isn't the same as a direct translation of words. Fingerspelling is more direct Trade, but it would be too time-wasting for anything but smaller things like names."

Taas takes a moment to gather his thoughts, trying to remember how it had been described to him, long ago. "It's communicating by imagery, almost. Sometimes you even bring words together to mean other things, and absolute direct translation can sound crude and odd. The signs are 'I name C-y-r-i-l', but I read it as 'My name is Cyril'."

Cyril isn't 100% sure he understands that completely, but he will the more he uses the language. Still, it gives him the right combination of signs to do what Taas had asked.

My name is Cyril, he signs. "Like that?"

"Perfect," Taas replies fondly, feeling that strange warmth inside again. It makes him happy to see Cyril interested in a thing like this. Communicating on another level seemed... intimate, really.

"This is 'elf'", he continues, tracing his ear to a point. "Dalish isn't really a word by itself, but I've seen people use 'elf' 'tattoo' to describe your people."

"What does that look like?" he asks, more than a little curious at how a visual language described his people. Right now, he's more consumed with the idea of learning more knowledge. It's even enough to make him forget that he's exhausted. He seems very lit up as he focuses on Taas's hands.

Despite that focus, there is a part of him that really likes the idea of doing it just to give Taas a place to talk about his own language and to communicate in a slightly easier way. They'd have to make a habit of signing when they were alone so it would be easier for Cyril to learn. "Oh, and what about 'clan' is there a sign for 'clan?'"

He signs 'elf' and 'tattoo' together with a smile. 'Tattoo' was a long sign with three parts, so he goes slow for Cyril's sake. "Even more literally, it's 'body art'," the warrior adds with a little shrug. "That's why it's in parts."

Then he has to think for a moment about the last question. While he was fluent, there tended to be cultural differences. "I don't think there's one specifically for 'clan'. I'd use 'family' instead. It still works for a Dalish clan." He signs 'family' for Cyril, and then 'elf' 'tattoo' 'family' together.

Cyril repeats those signs several times to make sure he gets them right. The idea that tattoo is body art makes him think of something then.

"If this," he makes the tattoo sign to show what he's talking about. "Is 'body art' then wouldn't it work for your vitaar as well?"