OPEN: The Loyal Shield

[lifeofendurance]

WHO: Aleron and YOU
WHAT: General Catch All while the Seeker settles in
WHEN: Guardian 24-Drakonis 14
WHERE: Skyhold (varies)
NOTES: Prose or brackets fine. Can also use for any scenes wanted.

It barely takes any time since his arrival for Aleron to resume what has been his daily habits for years now. Being relocated inside the Inquisition fortress has made little difference, beyond a change of scenery. He knows of no other way than the one he's followed most his life. With everything outside the walls in sheer chaos, finding order within his personal habits provides a rock solid foundation to face those challenges.

Chapel
Every morning and evening, before he breaks his fast, before he commits himself to rest, Aleron can be found inside the Chapel, knelt in prayer. He is as earnest in his devotions as he is with the remainder of his life and spends no less than an hour each time praying through sections of the Chant of Light. It is familiar. It is the base of his faith. It is his faith that holds him up, and to neglect it would be unjust in his mind.

Courtyard
During the day, Aleron commits himself to practice and training his weapon skills, though he prefers light leathers to full armor for the exercise. A particularly sharp eye or veteran combatant will note something unusual. He executes moves with precision, clearly well studied, with years of practice. However, he does not excel with the sword, not like a true master or exceptional talent would. Still, every day, he is present in the yard, working on his form, his stance, his skills.

Stables
Most days, he finds his way to the stables, to check after the welfare of his horse he rode into Skyhold. Valiente is a lively mount, but not too aggressive, nor does he seem to mind being quartered with so many others. Weather permitting, Aleron saddles him for a short ride through the mountain passes, enough to keep the horse hale and hearty, but never so much as to risk his health or a broken limb on treacherous footing.

Library
Every afternoon, the Seeker abandons physical pursuits for academic ones. Anyone who's made note of his somber default expression will find him different when engaged in scholarly reading and research. His eyes light as he peruses the shelves, smiles and looks of surprise manifest when he stumbles across some new tidbit of fact or history of which he had previously been unaware. Peculiar to some that a man could become so animated reading titles such as Tales of the Destruction of Thedas or The Essays of Divine Ambrosia II, but his excitement over the material is present and palpable.

Tavern
Of an evening, there is a solitary man seated with a single ale which he nurses slowly. Aleron doesn't engage in games of chance, flirt with the servers, or join in any more raucous singing that happens once the patrons are well in their cups. He sits, listens to the bard, sometimes reads a book, other times a letter. The letters often sit on the table for a considerable length of time while he stares off into the distance, as if deliberating if he wants to open them or not. If the place is crowded, he makes no objections to others joining him.

Comments

[ungovernable]

The warm smile that his startled Benuta had prompted only broadens with amusement when he bows to her and shapes her title. For a moment she does not give ground, because she is a terrible person - but graciously, that moment passed, she allows him his space and instead gathers her skirts to sit in the other nearest seat, gesturing him back down to his. Little enough of her appears to have changed in the interim - even her clothing makes only few concessions to Skyhold's climate as opposed to Nevarra City's.

"Aleron," she repeats, gently, by way of giving that permission. "I came not long before the Herald's wake - I serve on the Council of Magi, here, among other things." Always with her finger in this, that and the other thing - that can come as no great surprise. "You are the second of your Order to surprise me so - I am glad of it."

With the mysterious disappearance of said Order ... she had not thought to see either of them again.

[lifeofendurance]

That mysterious disappearance troubles him greatly and is part of what drove him to come. Knowing the Right Hand of the Divine was here seemed the best place to begin trying to decide where all his brethren vanished to while he was seeing his mother relocated.

But such troubling ruminations are shelved for further brooding later. He inclines his head as acknowledgement of her permission for the familiar. Tutoyer his mother would call it. She's been particularly trying of late, pushing at him to conform to her wishes even while complaining bitterly over Ravonild's out of control behavior. Maker though, if she knew Benuta was here...

He can't help himself, the smile twitches up just a little bit more. "It is good to see you again." Truly, he always enjoyed her company, lively and clever, even if he could not be what their respective mothers had hoped for. "You are well?"

[ungovernable]

"Inasmuch as any of us might claim to be," she says, easily - the work is hard, the days are long, the people she sometimes wants to strangle. She handles it with the same deft hand and quick, bright laugh that she handled court intrigue and her ambitious dream of the better Nevarra in her home, though, and she wears it the same light way. The weight of it is familiar; it doesn't bear her down.

At least, not mostly. And not now, for the audience of an old friend who she would have see her smiling and glad of him.

"It's been quite the adjustment," after a moment, in a tone of concession.

[lifeofendurance]

"The trek up the mountain is quite bracing. This is a world apart from Nevarra."

Not that he would ever accuse her of being incapable of adjusting but he is rather surprised that she's willing to come somewhere so remote and not so nearly a civilized as her homeland. For his part, he ignores the cold, the damp, the reek of dog, everything not a bit pleasant about the fortress. He's been raised to never complain and always endure what was thrust at him with compliance and acceptance.

And he worries. This is greatly different from what Benuta has known at home, and Aleron is not so dense that he cannot pick up the tone of her voice. "Have you traveled here alone?"

Surely she should not have come by herself. At the very least she should have a small retinue with her for the journey.

[ungovernable]

The light touch of her hand to his is the easy affection of an old friend; there is a laugh in her voice when she says, "I did not leave Nevarra City alone, no," she assures him. "A retinue accompanied me much of the journey, though for various reasons, I did begin the ascent of the Frostbacks alone."

It had been - an experience. A bracing one, but not one she regrets, in the end. This is very different from Nevarra, and...it is good, she thinks, for that. She needs that. She is not to be some soft thing who doesn't stir from her books and her intrigues, at least not yet - she wants very much to sink into this, up to the elbow, to do the thing right. It is a small concession that she adjusts, but -

But she does adjust. And she takes pride in doing so.

"Of course, I owe much of the success of that to Altus Pavus, who was kind enough to escort me the last distance. I have found a wonderful friend in him." A slight, delicate pause-- "I hope you will not hold his origins against him."

He was good enough for Andraste's Herald. He ought to be good enough for anyone else on that alone, if they are too fool to see his qualities for themselves. (And she is protective of him - he is dear to her, dear enough that she wishes Aleron will like him also.)

[lifeofendurance]

"Altus? A Tevinter?" Like most from Southern Thedas, Aleron's reasonably suspicious of the nation and the rampant abuses of magic that permeates the entire country. He knows about them. He also knows that the Seekers' jurisdiction there is frequently hampered by quibbling details over answering to the wrong Divine. Depends on which way the wind is blowing and which magister is angry with whom. Frustrating in theory alone and he's not ever been dispatched there personally.

Still. Anyone with the decency to assist a lady with an arduous journey cannot be wholly dismissed out of hand. Grudgingly, he concedes, "I won't hold his origins against him. However, I will question your abilities as a judge of character." It's a poor attempt at a joke, as he concludes, "After all, you did befriend me."

Low opinion of himself, even after all this time? Absolutely.

[ungovernable]

"A friend," is her neutral answer to a Tevinter; Dorian is many things, but first and foremost he is the most important person to Benevenuta in this Inquisition. The Inquisition and its cause are the most important thing - she is lucky in her friendship that upon that, they are always in agreement.

When he settles on his concession, she rewards him by laughing warmly when he makes his jest. "And I have regretted not a moment of it, and won't have a bit of your brooding."

They'd have made a terrible couple, ultimately, but she thinks they might have made the best of things if it had turned out that way - he was not poor company. They would have found a balance, in time.

But Aleron, she suspected, wasn't built for that sort of practicality. No; this was better.