Truth or Dare: Side Party for Servants and Scoundrels

[faderifting]

WHO: Anyone!
WHAT: A party for people who might scare the nobility, are deathly afraid of chandeliers, or fled the soiree with cheeses hidden in their clothes and need to make a clean getaway.
WHEN: During (and after) the soiree.
WHERE: The valley beyond Skyhold.
NOTES: Drinking, revelry. People might make out or something. We're not responsible for your actions.

The soiree might be fun, if you're into that sort of thing, but that isn't what it's for. It's for impressing the powerful and opening their pockets—and, necessarily, some people aren't invited. In some cases that's personal. In others, it's just understood. When they're done helping to set up, most of the servants and workers who aren't needed to serve make themselves scarce. The usual trickle of refugees to and from the fortress slows. Some people used to sleeping in the stables may find their "beds" occupied by nobles' horses or the rooms they had been squatting in cleaned and prepared for someone else to stay in.

There's no resentment. (Or at least very little.) That's how these things go. And in the valley outside the fortress' walls, there are foot soldiers and refugees and a number of miscellaneous exiles who welcome the company with large fires, cheap but freely flowing alcohol, and whatever music can be wrung out of instruments exposed to such low temperatures. The crowd thins and dwindles as the night wears on, but even after the last person has left the Great Hall in Skyhold, there's still a sizable gathering near the river with no intention of going to sleep before sunrise.

No masks allowed.

Comments

[girlinthebox]

For a moment, she looks half-guilty, her head cocking inquisitively at the apricots before slipping her fingers into the bag to claim one. "Her heel had broken. She wanted to dance but couldn't show her face with broken shoes. Worse than not going at all. She needed them so she could dance with the face she remembered from last Wintersend," she explains, before nibbling at the sticky fruit.

"She needed them more."

[aintwejust]

"...that's- mighty kind of ya. We'll find you somth'n that has less clunk later, yeah?" He picks out an apricot of his own for a nibble, tucking the bag in his pocket. A girl be'n a girl, lett'n another girl be a girl.

"Well if you keep your feet on my boots, suppose that should keep you off the snow 'nuf for a dance."

[girlinthebox]

There is no snow this close to the fires, but she smiles anyway, cocks her head like they're sharing a secret. Mal likes to act tough and aloof, but his sweetness shows in little gestures, for a girl that isn't his kin but close enough to count.

He gets a very polite curtsy, all the same.

[aintwejust]

Even if it was the one trip- even if she's strange? She's his. Four letters and a lot of weight, but Crew is Crew and family's what you make of it. He can't fix what's wrong in her head but he can make the world a little brighter sometimes. Candy, dancing, kind questions.

He offers her a hand, smile warm and wide and genuine.

[girlinthebox]

Carefully, she creeps up, balancing herself on the broad, rough toes of his boots. She weighs next to nothing, with the way she balances herself, her hands carefully cradled inside his. Family. The feeling radiates warmth brighter than the fire, wrapping around safe and secure like a blanket around her shoulders.

She tastes sweets on her tongue and for just a moment, she can pretend they're all safe. They're untouchable, here and now.

[aintwejust]

He never had a sister. Too young to have a daughter- but there'd been a girl back before he'd been in the army. One of the hand's siblings or kids or what have you, he'd never known. But she took to him, he'd been kind to her and they were blood of a sort. The sort that comes up from living in the same place, sharing the same dreams, the same troubles. She didn't survive the Blight.

Not a lot of 'em did.

But he can set that ghost and every other aside, focusing on this girl what's taken to him. These hands and these feet light on his like it's nothing. Like they do this all the time. Shadows and stress fall away and he feels his years, thirty and some, rather than forever and an age. Laughs like he's never known grief as they fly around the bonfire.

[girlinthebox]

If she resembles a ghost, at least it is a good one, and her eyes laugh back at him as they move in time, her toes gripping at the leather of his boots. They could fly away, it feels like. River can tip her head back and see the stars spin around them like little lightning bugs, clinging close to her captain as they merrily make their way around the roaring fire.

Finally the music seems to trail off, and River responds by sinking forward, her arms slipping to wrap around Mal's middle. Her captain.

She'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.