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peopleofthedas2011-12-07 10:34 am
twist_shimmy) wrote in peopleofthedas2011-12-07 10:34 am
Fanfic: 20 Reasons to Forget the Blight
In your heart shall burn
An unquenchable flame
All-consuming, and never satisfied.
-Threnodies 5:7
Reason: Stars
Rating: T
Characters: f!Surana (Faolán), Duncan, Jowan, Niall, Cullen
Word Count: 2420
Summary: The Fade hath no fury like a mage with a headache.
A/N: For those of you wondering what Faolán was like in the Tower? This is it. I have literally been trying to finish this stupid thing for... 200 days, butcave_fatuam and I did a WIP pact this Sunday and we both got ours done. I may make this a comm thing, because solidarity really is an excellent motivator.
Jowan was still talking.
Maker’s breath, as if the headache from nearly getting possessed by a man who called himself Mouse wasn’t bad enough. Her old friend’s voice was aiming directly at her skull and making her eyes throb. She hadn’t even been awake for two minutes and he was already asking her questions that required coherent thought to answer, which was rude.
Faolán rubbed at her temples and wondered if mages got in trouble for silencing apprentices. “Leave me alone, Jowan! You know I can’t tell you about the Harrowing.”
“Fine!” he scowled, stamping his foot. “When I’m made Tranquil, you’ll be sorry.”
“Not if it keeps you from being so melodramatic.”
“I’m not being melodramatic!” he wailed.
“Then you’re not telling me everything.” Faolán shoved past him and began putting her shoes back on. “And watching me sleep is creepy, anyway. Who are you, Cullen?”
“Forgive me for being worried about a friend,” he retorted. “Irving wants to see you. Go be a full mage and stop wasting your time with us apprentices.”
“Melodramatic!” she called over her shoulder, striding toward the door and trying to ignore the way the other apprentices giggled.
“Cullen’s looking for you, I think,” said her bunkmate, catching her by the door. “He keeps walking the hall and peeking in.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Now all Faolán needed was a run-in with Greagoir and her day would be complete. It would probably be best for her not to explode anything today, then. With that in mind, she slunk out into the hall and toward the stairs.
Faolán was never really allowed to spend much time on the upper floors since a rather amusing incident in the library, so there was a lot to see as she walked. She’d originally had every intention of visiting the Senior Enchanter immediately, but the level of the tower that housed the full mages had these high sorts of ledges between the ceilings and the half-walls that divided one room from another. Very distracting. And next to the library stood a statue of a woman holding a bowl, and that proved just the right height to help her haul herself up.
...This was nice. Mages and Templars walked back and forth below her, and she swung her legs and watched them scurry about, completely oblivious to her sitting several feet above their heads. Some watchmen the Templars were! Nobody had even noticed her climb up here, and in her robes that was saying somethi--
“F-F-Faolán, uh....”
Andraste’s smalls. Faolán looked over her left shoulder, and sure enough, there was Cullen. How had he found her so quickly?
“...Hi, Cullen.”
“Y-you shouldn’t be up there.” His armor clinked as he shifted from side to side. “You could-- fall, or....”
“I’m not going to fall. There’s a lot of room up here!” She smiled and leaned back, enjoying the look of panic that flickered across his face.
“The-First-Enchanter-is-looking-for-you,” he said in a rush, then pinched at the bridge of his nose. “P-Please get down. I’m so relieved you survived your Harrowing, and if you broke your neck now I-I’d--”
Faolán rolled her eyes and began to climb down. Judging by how red-faced Cullen was when she was back with feet on the floor, her robes had climbed up farther than he was prepared for. When she grinned at him and smoothed a lingering wrinkle at her waist, his flush deepened, and then he turned and stalked away without another word.
“You really shouldn’t torment him, you know,” came a low voice from under the arch she’d been perched on. “You’ll end up regretting it.”
Now there was a voice she liked hearing. She turned and grinned at Niall. “Would you rather I tormented you?”
A slow smile spread across those wonderful lips of his, and she felt an answering pang in the pit of her stomach. “Go see Irving. You can enjoy your free time later.”
Hmph. He wasn’t being any fun today. “Suit yourself.” She stepped closer and looked up at him, lips slightly parted. Maybe now that she was a full mage he would finally give in. One of the reasons she liked Niall so much was because of his stupid scruples. The other reason was because he let her push his boundaries further each time she caught him off his guard.
Not today. He tugged on one of her ponytails and pointed down the hall toward the First Enchanter’s study, and walked off to go stuff his face between the pages of a book instead of-- ugh.
...Oh, Maker, Greagoir was talking to Irving. His voice made her shoes feel exactly seven times heavier. As soon as she entered the room, his cold eyes fixed on her face, and his scowl deepened. Faolán flinched and dropped her gaze to the floor. For several seconds, all she could hear was the blood rushing through her ears.
They were yelling, but for once they weren’t yelling at her. There was a third man in the room, dark-complected and nearly as heavily armored as Greagoir himself, who seemed to be drawing the Knight-Commander’s ire. But almost as soon as she entered, Irving was smiling, and she was being handed new robes and a new staff and a pretty ring.
The First Enchanter congratulated her, which was nice, and Greagoir didn’t say a word, which was even better. But then, when Irving paired the wonderful words, “the rest of the day is yours” with “please escort the Grey Warden back to his room,” Faolán nearly sulked.
“Can’t he find his own way back?”
Irving narrowed his eyes at her. “Young lady.”
But it was the look on Greagoir’s face that had her nodding meekly and showing the Warden out the door.
Duncan, they’d said. At least he looked interesting, and seemed nice, too. As soon as they were out of sight of the First Enchanter’s study, he paused in the hall and turned directly toward her.
“Thank you for walking with me.”
Faolán spied Cullen watching her from behind a nearby pillar, and so turned her full attention to Duncan to prevent him from trying to talk to her again. He asked her a few questions, and she returned the favor, more to keep them talking than out of an interest in the answer. But then he actually told her why Greagoir and Irving had been fighting, which she hadn’t expected. Apprentices were never told anything.
Being a full mage would be fun.
“Tell me, are you happy in the Circle?”
Faolán shrugged and grinned at him. “Why wouldn’t I be? The Senior Enchanters are no fun, but I’m good at magic, and there’s always trouble to get into if I get bored.”
“Trouble?” Duncan raised an eyebrow at her. She’d expected him to look rather pale and awkward like everyone else did when she said things like that, which meant he didn’t know about what had happened with Templar Conrí.
Good.
“I’m a Primal mage,” she said with a smile. “Lightning is never boring.”
Duncan nodded. “The Knight-Commander mentioned that you were skilled with elemental magic. Though he also said you heal.”
Faolán shrugged again. “Sure.” She touched his arm and jolted him with a little bit of restorative energy. “Healing’s less interesting.”
He chuckled. “To you, perhaps. To those of us who were born without the gift of magic, it’s the most fascinating talent a mage possesses.”
“Not here. Everyone can heal, here. They all think the Templars will trust them if they’re healers. Which they don’t.”
“And you like living in the Tower?”
They’d reached the door to the guest room, and Cullen was still walking behind them. Faolán opened the door and stepped in before Duncan, hoping that this would keep him from continuing the conversation out where her Templar shadow could keep watching. “What’s not to like? I get to set things on fire, people cook my meals for me, and there are plenty of people to talk to.”
“It is my understanding that many of the mages here find the life somewhat restrictive.”
Faolán snorted. “‘Many of the mages here’ didn’t grow up on one of the poorest farms in Lothering and have their families slaughtered because they were knife-ears. I know when I have it good.”
Duncan blinked and closed the door behind them. “A fair point.”
“Why are you so curious?” She sat on the edge of his bed and started kicking her legs.
“In truth, I came here seeking a Warden recruit. Irving mentioned you, and seems to think some time away from the Tower would be... beneficial. You seem to have developed the reputation for trouble among your Templar guardians.”
Faolán bit her lip. Couldn’t Wardens just... take people if they wanted to? She’d just made it. The last thing she wanted was to lose her place in the Tower after working so blasted hard for the past decade and a half. She looked up at Duncan with wide eyes, mind whirling frantically. “Most of that’s a misunderstanding. I wasn’t that good with lightning when I was little, and there was this bully who used to get me in trouble--”
He’d crossed the room in seconds and wrapped his fingers around her arm. “Stop.”
“Ow! Let go, you ass.”
“They let me look over your records. Breaking out of the Tower for a swim, tormenting the door guards, and setting fire to classrooms in the middle of the night and admitting to it are not ‘misunderstandings.’” Duncan’s fingers squeezed. “The Knight-Commander warned me that you were manipulative. The skill has its uses, but I’m afraid you picked the wrong target.”
And then she was free again, and he moved past her to re-open the bedroom door. “May you find better luck elsewhere.”
Faolán stared at him, debating her chances of getting away with shocking him senseless, then snatched her dignity up and fled his room. As the door clicked shut behind her, she looked around for Cullen, but thankfully he was nowhere to be found.
“Are you done with your meeting?” And there it was, the voice belonging to the man with the worst sense of timing she’d ever known.
She glanced up and sighed. “Jowan. Yes. What do you want?”
“I-I don’t want to talk here. Just... come with me.”
Faolán stood and stared until he took her by the hand and began to drag her toward the chapel. Mages only went into the chapel for one reason.... Oh. How amusing! So that was why he’d been acting oddly all day. They’d been study partners for years, but it had never even occurred to her to think about him outside of that context. But his fingers in hers were very strong, and his shoulders were broad, which suggested fun, if nothing else.
She’d made worse decisions, anyway.
“Faolán?” Jowan pulled her into an alcove in the back of the chapel and sat her down on a bench. “I-I want to tell you why I’ve been acting so strangely lately.”
She feigned ignorance. “You’ve had me worried, you know.”
He sighed in relief. “Good. I was hoping you’d say that.” Jowan looked over her shoulder, and she turned to see an initiate staring at them.
“Do you need something?” Faolán asked sweetly, but Jowan put a hand on her shoulder.
“Faolán? I’d like you to meet Lily.”
“Jowan has told me so much about you,” Lily said, offering a plump-cheeked smile that made Faolán feel like skin wrapped around bone. “He’s lucky to have such a good friend.”
And then they were talking, and Faolán listened, idly spinning the ring the First Enchanter had given her mere minutes ago. Best friend? Maybe. Faolán spoke to plenty of people, but that hardly meant anything.
But an idiot she was not. Jowan was stupid, and because he was stupid the Templars suspected him of blood magic, which meant they suspected her, too. No wonder Greagoir had....
No. She was a mage. She’d passed the test.
Faolán bared her teeth at them once their words finally trickled to a halt. “Of course I’ll help. Stay here, and I’ll do the footwork, okay?”
She was used to it being silent when it was dark, but outside things rustled, and chirped, and the fire nearby was driving her to distraction with its constant popping and crackling and smell.
Fire didn’t like the wind, but the trees were offering less protection than she expected they would when she used to sit and stare out the window and wonder what it would be like to walk under them.
And the outdoors was also dirty. Her pretty new robes, which had already been splattered with Jowan’s blood when he cut his hand open, now also had dark spots and smudges from the dirt beneath her.
Her eyes began to burn, and she closed them, rolled onto her stomach, and rested her head on her arms. In some ways that was worse, because then instead of leaves she was staring at the look on Greagoir’s face when she struggled to her feet after the blast.
Blood mage.
Aeonar.
You should have let me handle her, Irving.
Templars knew how to hate. And now she was stuck outside with Duncan, he of the nice hair and mean rejections.
The rest of the day is yours. And she’d made a lovely mess with it. No wonder Owain never let her in the stock room unsupervised.
“Here, eat.” The clang of a metal plate near her elbow made her twitch in surprise.
Faolán lifted her head and stared up at Duncan. He sat down beside her and began picking the meat off his portion of rabbit. Soon, the smell proved too enticing, and she moved to a sitting position and tackled her own plate. She had expected him to be as... harsh as he'd been in his quarters, but since they left the tower he had proven nothing but polite.
It took several minutes, but she worked up the will to speak. “This is the first I’ve been outdoors in years.” There was that time she’d sneaked out and gone swimming, but that had been such a short trip that it hardly counted, even if it had made it into her file. She hadn't even been in the water long enough to get cold.
“The novelty is likely to wear off quickly.” His tone wasn't unkind, and as he sucked his fingers clean she tried to think of a reply.
A twig snapped nearby, and Faolán extinguished their fire and froze the tree across from them unthinkingly. There was a hiss of steam and several sad pops, and then they were left in darkness.
“...Oops.” Her voice sounded too loud without light.
Her mentor would have berated her for being so twitchy, if the Templars hadn’t silenced her first for something like that. Her shoulders tensed, and she expected Duncan’s voice to come from the darkness to her left and disapprove.
Instead, he laughed, low and short, and she caught herself giggling along. “I’m really sorry about the fire,” she groaned.
“You have excellent reflexes. That will come to good use against the darkspawn.”
Right. Darkspawn. If she ever saw Jowan again, she would kill him on the spot.
“Do you want me to fix the fire?”
His armor clinked. “Save your magic. It’s nice out.” In the gloom, she could just barely make out his profile titled toward the sky. Faolán’s gaze followed, and she gasped at the sheer amount of stars visible between the trees.
“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen....” It suddenly hit her how strange her life must have been up until Jowan’s dagger had pierced his hand and exiled her from her home. Her eyes began to burn again, and she took several deep, shuddering breaths.
The rest of the day is yours. “Ser... Ser Duncan?”
“Yes?”
“Do they have names? The stars, I mean.”
His head turned toward her, and she thought she saw pity. “Come here, young lady. If you know enough, stars can keep you from getting lost outdoors.”
She leaned over and rested her head against his calves, worried that he would accuse her of being manipulative again. But she just wanted to touch someone so that the stars and the trees and the twigs wouldn’t make her feel afraid. Duncan seemed to understand, because he pointed upward and began speaking, and drawing constellations, and saying names until it all blended together into one gorgeous whorl of information.
The rest of the day is yours. And she had discovered stars.
Characters: f!Surana (Faolán), Duncan, Jowan, Niall, Cullen
Word Count: 2420
Summary: The Fade hath no fury like a mage with a headache.
A/N: For those of you wondering what Faolán was like in the Tower? This is it. I have literally been trying to finish this stupid thing for... 200 days, but
cave_fatuam and I did a WIP pact this Sunday and we both got ours done. I may make this a comm thing, because solidarity really is an excellent motivator.Jowan was still talking.
Maker’s breath, as if the headache from nearly getting possessed by a man who called himself Mouse wasn’t bad enough. Her old friend’s voice was aiming directly at her skull and making her eyes throb. She hadn’t even been awake for two minutes and he was already asking her questions that required coherent thought to answer, which was rude.
Faolán rubbed at her temples and wondered if mages got in trouble for silencing apprentices. “Leave me alone, Jowan! You know I can’t tell you about the Harrowing.”
“Fine!” he scowled, stamping his foot. “When I’m made Tranquil, you’ll be sorry.”
“Not if it keeps you from being so melodramatic.”
“I’m not being melodramatic!” he wailed.
“Then you’re not telling me everything.” Faolán shoved past him and began putting her shoes back on. “And watching me sleep is creepy, anyway. Who are you, Cullen?”
“Forgive me for being worried about a friend,” he retorted. “Irving wants to see you. Go be a full mage and stop wasting your time with us apprentices.”
“Melodramatic!” she called over her shoulder, striding toward the door and trying to ignore the way the other apprentices giggled.
“Cullen’s looking for you, I think,” said her bunkmate, catching her by the door. “He keeps walking the hall and peeking in.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Now all Faolán needed was a run-in with Greagoir and her day would be complete. It would probably be best for her not to explode anything today, then. With that in mind, she slunk out into the hall and toward the stairs.
Faolán was never really allowed to spend much time on the upper floors since a rather amusing incident in the library, so there was a lot to see as she walked. She’d originally had every intention of visiting the Senior Enchanter immediately, but the level of the tower that housed the full mages had these high sorts of ledges between the ceilings and the half-walls that divided one room from another. Very distracting. And next to the library stood a statue of a woman holding a bowl, and that proved just the right height to help her haul herself up.
...This was nice. Mages and Templars walked back and forth below her, and she swung her legs and watched them scurry about, completely oblivious to her sitting several feet above their heads. Some watchmen the Templars were! Nobody had even noticed her climb up here, and in her robes that was saying somethi--
“F-F-Faolán, uh....”
Andraste’s smalls. Faolán looked over her left shoulder, and sure enough, there was Cullen. How had he found her so quickly?
“...Hi, Cullen.”
“Y-you shouldn’t be up there.” His armor clinked as he shifted from side to side. “You could-- fall, or....”
“I’m not going to fall. There’s a lot of room up here!” She smiled and leaned back, enjoying the look of panic that flickered across his face.
“The-First-Enchanter-is-looking-for-you,” he said in a rush, then pinched at the bridge of his nose. “P-Please get down. I’m so relieved you survived your Harrowing, and if you broke your neck now I-I’d--”
Faolán rolled her eyes and began to climb down. Judging by how red-faced Cullen was when she was back with feet on the floor, her robes had climbed up farther than he was prepared for. When she grinned at him and smoothed a lingering wrinkle at her waist, his flush deepened, and then he turned and stalked away without another word.
“You really shouldn’t torment him, you know,” came a low voice from under the arch she’d been perched on. “You’ll end up regretting it.”
Now there was a voice she liked hearing. She turned and grinned at Niall. “Would you rather I tormented you?”
A slow smile spread across those wonderful lips of his, and she felt an answering pang in the pit of her stomach. “Go see Irving. You can enjoy your free time later.”
Hmph. He wasn’t being any fun today. “Suit yourself.” She stepped closer and looked up at him, lips slightly parted. Maybe now that she was a full mage he would finally give in. One of the reasons she liked Niall so much was because of his stupid scruples. The other reason was because he let her push his boundaries further each time she caught him off his guard.
Not today. He tugged on one of her ponytails and pointed down the hall toward the First Enchanter’s study, and walked off to go stuff his face between the pages of a book instead of-- ugh.
...Oh, Maker, Greagoir was talking to Irving. His voice made her shoes feel exactly seven times heavier. As soon as she entered the room, his cold eyes fixed on her face, and his scowl deepened. Faolán flinched and dropped her gaze to the floor. For several seconds, all she could hear was the blood rushing through her ears.
They were yelling, but for once they weren’t yelling at her. There was a third man in the room, dark-complected and nearly as heavily armored as Greagoir himself, who seemed to be drawing the Knight-Commander’s ire. But almost as soon as she entered, Irving was smiling, and she was being handed new robes and a new staff and a pretty ring.
The First Enchanter congratulated her, which was nice, and Greagoir didn’t say a word, which was even better. But then, when Irving paired the wonderful words, “the rest of the day is yours” with “please escort the Grey Warden back to his room,” Faolán nearly sulked.
“Can’t he find his own way back?”
Irving narrowed his eyes at her. “Young lady.”
But it was the look on Greagoir’s face that had her nodding meekly and showing the Warden out the door.
Duncan, they’d said. At least he looked interesting, and seemed nice, too. As soon as they were out of sight of the First Enchanter’s study, he paused in the hall and turned directly toward her.
“Thank you for walking with me.”
Faolán spied Cullen watching her from behind a nearby pillar, and so turned her full attention to Duncan to prevent him from trying to talk to her again. He asked her a few questions, and she returned the favor, more to keep them talking than out of an interest in the answer. But then he actually told her why Greagoir and Irving had been fighting, which she hadn’t expected. Apprentices were never told anything.
Being a full mage would be fun.
“Tell me, are you happy in the Circle?”
Faolán shrugged and grinned at him. “Why wouldn’t I be? The Senior Enchanters are no fun, but I’m good at magic, and there’s always trouble to get into if I get bored.”
“Trouble?” Duncan raised an eyebrow at her. She’d expected him to look rather pale and awkward like everyone else did when she said things like that, which meant he didn’t know about what had happened with Templar Conrí.
Good.
“I’m a Primal mage,” she said with a smile. “Lightning is never boring.”
Duncan nodded. “The Knight-Commander mentioned that you were skilled with elemental magic. Though he also said you heal.”
Faolán shrugged again. “Sure.” She touched his arm and jolted him with a little bit of restorative energy. “Healing’s less interesting.”
He chuckled. “To you, perhaps. To those of us who were born without the gift of magic, it’s the most fascinating talent a mage possesses.”
“Not here. Everyone can heal, here. They all think the Templars will trust them if they’re healers. Which they don’t.”
“And you like living in the Tower?”
They’d reached the door to the guest room, and Cullen was still walking behind them. Faolán opened the door and stepped in before Duncan, hoping that this would keep him from continuing the conversation out where her Templar shadow could keep watching. “What’s not to like? I get to set things on fire, people cook my meals for me, and there are plenty of people to talk to.”
“It is my understanding that many of the mages here find the life somewhat restrictive.”
Faolán snorted. “‘Many of the mages here’ didn’t grow up on one of the poorest farms in Lothering and have their families slaughtered because they were knife-ears. I know when I have it good.”
Duncan blinked and closed the door behind them. “A fair point.”
“Why are you so curious?” She sat on the edge of his bed and started kicking her legs.
“In truth, I came here seeking a Warden recruit. Irving mentioned you, and seems to think some time away from the Tower would be... beneficial. You seem to have developed the reputation for trouble among your Templar guardians.”
Faolán bit her lip. Couldn’t Wardens just... take people if they wanted to? She’d just made it. The last thing she wanted was to lose her place in the Tower after working so blasted hard for the past decade and a half. She looked up at Duncan with wide eyes, mind whirling frantically. “Most of that’s a misunderstanding. I wasn’t that good with lightning when I was little, and there was this bully who used to get me in trouble--”
He’d crossed the room in seconds and wrapped his fingers around her arm. “Stop.”
“Ow! Let go, you ass.”
“They let me look over your records. Breaking out of the Tower for a swim, tormenting the door guards, and setting fire to classrooms in the middle of the night and admitting to it are not ‘misunderstandings.’” Duncan’s fingers squeezed. “The Knight-Commander warned me that you were manipulative. The skill has its uses, but I’m afraid you picked the wrong target.”
And then she was free again, and he moved past her to re-open the bedroom door. “May you find better luck elsewhere.”
Faolán stared at him, debating her chances of getting away with shocking him senseless, then snatched her dignity up and fled his room. As the door clicked shut behind her, she looked around for Cullen, but thankfully he was nowhere to be found.
“Are you done with your meeting?” And there it was, the voice belonging to the man with the worst sense of timing she’d ever known.
She glanced up and sighed. “Jowan. Yes. What do you want?”
“I-I don’t want to talk here. Just... come with me.”
Faolán stood and stared until he took her by the hand and began to drag her toward the chapel. Mages only went into the chapel for one reason.... Oh. How amusing! So that was why he’d been acting oddly all day. They’d been study partners for years, but it had never even occurred to her to think about him outside of that context. But his fingers in hers were very strong, and his shoulders were broad, which suggested fun, if nothing else.
She’d made worse decisions, anyway.
“Faolán?” Jowan pulled her into an alcove in the back of the chapel and sat her down on a bench. “I-I want to tell you why I’ve been acting so strangely lately.”
She feigned ignorance. “You’ve had me worried, you know.”
He sighed in relief. “Good. I was hoping you’d say that.” Jowan looked over her shoulder, and she turned to see an initiate staring at them.
“Do you need something?” Faolán asked sweetly, but Jowan put a hand on her shoulder.
“Faolán? I’d like you to meet Lily.”
“Jowan has told me so much about you,” Lily said, offering a plump-cheeked smile that made Faolán feel like skin wrapped around bone. “He’s lucky to have such a good friend.”
And then they were talking, and Faolán listened, idly spinning the ring the First Enchanter had given her mere minutes ago. Best friend? Maybe. Faolán spoke to plenty of people, but that hardly meant anything.
But an idiot she was not. Jowan was stupid, and because he was stupid the Templars suspected him of blood magic, which meant they suspected her, too. No wonder Greagoir had....
No. She was a mage. She’d passed the test.
Faolán bared her teeth at them once their words finally trickled to a halt. “Of course I’ll help. Stay here, and I’ll do the footwork, okay?”
She was used to it being silent when it was dark, but outside things rustled, and chirped, and the fire nearby was driving her to distraction with its constant popping and crackling and smell.
Fire didn’t like the wind, but the trees were offering less protection than she expected they would when she used to sit and stare out the window and wonder what it would be like to walk under them.
And the outdoors was also dirty. Her pretty new robes, which had already been splattered with Jowan’s blood when he cut his hand open, now also had dark spots and smudges from the dirt beneath her.
Her eyes began to burn, and she closed them, rolled onto her stomach, and rested her head on her arms. In some ways that was worse, because then instead of leaves she was staring at the look on Greagoir’s face when she struggled to her feet after the blast.
Blood mage.
Aeonar.
You should have let me handle her, Irving.
Templars knew how to hate. And now she was stuck outside with Duncan, he of the nice hair and mean rejections.
The rest of the day is yours. And she’d made a lovely mess with it. No wonder Owain never let her in the stock room unsupervised.
“Here, eat.” The clang of a metal plate near her elbow made her twitch in surprise.
Faolán lifted her head and stared up at Duncan. He sat down beside her and began picking the meat off his portion of rabbit. Soon, the smell proved too enticing, and she moved to a sitting position and tackled her own plate. She had expected him to be as... harsh as he'd been in his quarters, but since they left the tower he had proven nothing but polite.
It took several minutes, but she worked up the will to speak. “This is the first I’ve been outdoors in years.” There was that time she’d sneaked out and gone swimming, but that had been such a short trip that it hardly counted, even if it had made it into her file. She hadn't even been in the water long enough to get cold.
“The novelty is likely to wear off quickly.” His tone wasn't unkind, and as he sucked his fingers clean she tried to think of a reply.
A twig snapped nearby, and Faolán extinguished their fire and froze the tree across from them unthinkingly. There was a hiss of steam and several sad pops, and then they were left in darkness.
“...Oops.” Her voice sounded too loud without light.
Her mentor would have berated her for being so twitchy, if the Templars hadn’t silenced her first for something like that. Her shoulders tensed, and she expected Duncan’s voice to come from the darkness to her left and disapprove.
Instead, he laughed, low and short, and she caught herself giggling along. “I’m really sorry about the fire,” she groaned.
“You have excellent reflexes. That will come to good use against the darkspawn.”
Right. Darkspawn. If she ever saw Jowan again, she would kill him on the spot.
“Do you want me to fix the fire?”
His armor clinked. “Save your magic. It’s nice out.” In the gloom, she could just barely make out his profile titled toward the sky. Faolán’s gaze followed, and she gasped at the sheer amount of stars visible between the trees.
“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen....” It suddenly hit her how strange her life must have been up until Jowan’s dagger had pierced his hand and exiled her from her home. Her eyes began to burn again, and she took several deep, shuddering breaths.
The rest of the day is yours. “Ser... Ser Duncan?”
“Yes?”
“Do they have names? The stars, I mean.”
His head turned toward her, and she thought she saw pity. “Come here, young lady. If you know enough, stars can keep you from getting lost outdoors.”
She leaned over and rested her head against his calves, worried that he would accuse her of being manipulative again. But she just wanted to touch someone so that the stars and the trees and the twigs wouldn’t make her feel afraid. Duncan seemed to understand, because he pointed upward and began speaking, and drawing constellations, and saying names until it all blended together into one gorgeous whorl of information.
The rest of the day is yours. And she had discovered stars.
She'd made worse decisions, anyway.
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<3
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It is, as Ash says, interesting to see the less-confident side of Faolan.
That picture of her is weird; I can see the light though holes in the middle of her ears. That's just wrong.
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It takes massive changes to bring out uncertain Faolan, so we get to see it... twice. XD Sadly, that's what made it so blasted hard to write.
It is lovely to have time to post. They gave me a new hire to train, so this might actually be a thing. I also moved closer to the office so I'm not commuting three hours a day. *falls over*
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