[For greytaliesin, a first attempt at writing Taliesin and Velanna, as part of a creative stuffs trade~]
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The watch was theirs alone once more, Nathaniel ahead scouting, Sigrun a few miles back bringing up the rear. The fire was too warm in the midsummer night, but he sat close to it anyway, stirring chunks of sizzling, spiced squirrel. He was watching for when the spices turned a particular shade of orange-golden, and he would have preferred to give it his full attention.
But Velanna was peering at it with distrust and disgust. It would come in time, her voice, clipped and haughty, and he waited for it, too.
“You intend for me to eat that?”
Ah, there it was.
“You will take issue with even this?” he asked, keeping his tone flat and removed from the frustration he felt pricking at his nerves. “It is only food.” Food that he had thought of preparing for her for the last fortnight. Food he had gathered herbs for.
“Food that you don’t know how to prepare. Is this how your clan did it? Mixing lahnvenahld in with the meat?”
Of course it would be that. A difference in experience, opinion of what it meant to be what they were. Taliesin shrugged. “It is how I do it.” And that, he had found in the last year and a half, was the important thing. She would understand.
“It will taste horrible,” she huffed.
Maybe.
“Think what you will,” he said, shifting back to grab the two eggs he had found on the edge of their camp. Two quick strikes and he cracked them into the pan just as the meat’s crust turned the right color. There was a hiss, steam, and then the smell, exactly what he had been going for.
Well. Close enough to what he remembered, at any rate. It was all there was to be hoped for.
“That is not what it’s supposed to look like,” she tried again, and he only leaned forward and took the pot handle in one leather-gloved hand and moved it from the coals.
“Go hungry, if you like.”
She stared at him, lips pursed, and then she threw up her hands and moved to sit beside him, beside the meal he’d made them. It was a small victory, but one he cherished; she so rarely caved to him, and he knew, now, that it came of trust and not deference. Deference; the idea of her bowing and scraping nearly made him laugh, breaking the grey mood her reaction had spun him into.
“Here,” he said, spearing a piece of meat on the end of his work knife. He held it in the light, then took a careful bite. It was only once he had swallowed that he offered it to her.
She took the blade from him, fingers dancing over his sparking magic that felt like home for just a moment, a quiet sign of I trust you, but if you’re wrong, and then she ate the morsel. She chewed. She swallowed.
And then she shook her head and he thought he could see her shoulders tremble.
“Dread Wolf take you. I don’t know what this is, but it’s-“
“Serviceable?”
”Good.”
Am I the only one who thinks that this ship would be adorable? Or even as a friendship it would be made of such warm sparkly feelings~
more last-minute submissions for sigrun week! (and I remembered her eye tatts the first time around this time -_-)
[YEP YOU HEARD ME]
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Lyrium. The part of her that was Justice knew it almost before she even saw them pulse into brightness, blurring Jormungandr’s outline until she was nothing but light that could cleave a man in two, nearly flesh made magic. The part of her yearned towards it, while the Dalish in her crept around the boundaries carefully. Lyrium was rare to her still, enticing but unknown, an element to be weighed and judged.
It took an entire month before the moment came when they brushed hands and Velanna didn’t die from the contact.
Lyrium made her mouth water and her eyes fixate on the intricate lines and whorls on Jormungandr’s face, marking her as other to the point where she could no more escape notice than Velanna could. It cracked her skin like Justice cracked Velanna’s when he gained ascendency enough to be separate for just a moment, just a fight. They stradled the Veil with every heartbeat.
It was six months before Jormungandr crouched beside her in a battle they were not winning and pressed her hand to Velanna’s mouth and told her to draw.
The power had flooded through her, intoxicating and transcendent, and before she had risen back to her feet, the earth answering her cries, she saw Jormungandr shudder and sigh. Even after, her heart did not return to normal beating, but the warrior attributed it to bad memories. Her magister lord ordering it of her. The memory of being used. You didn’t use me, the woman assured her, but I remembered. Velanna doubted.
It was a year before Jormungandr - Cauthrien, now, Cauthrien with a whispered identity, a history, a name, a role in the selling of city elves in Denerim but now a warrior for her - got drunk on too much whiskey after they parted, heated words hanging between them. It had been a year since they first met when Velanna went looking for her not three hours after their argument, to resolve it or continue it she didn’t know. It was at the end of that first year that Cauthrien dragged her close and kissed her, lyrium flaring and Velanna responding, seeking out the lines on her cheek and chin and throat until all she knew was the song of it.
The song.
It was lovely, and it was more than earthly, and it was a respite from the unending anger, anguish, pain, hatred, need, determination. It was no Dalish song and at the same time it was every Dalish song.
It was a respite.
For a night, Justice rested, and so did she.
For the “Raven made 1,0001 posts” picture, the character randomly chosen from the suggestions by my trusty dice was Velanna! (There were several suggestions for Velanna, which is pretty awesome!)
I tried out another coloring style, as I haven’t drawn much in awhile and really wanted to do a bit more of a painterly style.
(Oh, and I changed up bits of her costume, mostly the gloves)
[For Greytaliesin, obvs.]
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“Teach me,” Jormungandr says, coiled up in the corner of the dingy tavern bedroom on the outskirts of Nevarra City. “I want to know… this. I want to know what we’re doing.”
Velanna can’t help her flash of anger. Once, Justice had told her that she had to try to teach them, and if they did not listen, then she would have done all she could. Now he understands, better than she could have ever explained to him or taught him. And she will not teach this woman, even if she is a former slave and sympathetic and a powerful ally, at least as far as swords go.
So instead she reaches into her pack and pulls out a worn down book, throwing it at the other woman’s feet.
“Read it for yourself.” And then she hesitates. “… Can you read?” The Warden had taught her how to read beyond some scattered words, and now she feels shame trying to rise and burn in her cheeks. She doesn’t let it. The pieces of her she thinks are most Justice roil and seethe for a moment, whispering this isn’t your job.
And then Jormungandr nods, slowly, uncurling and bending down off her chair to pick it up. “Yes. I think so, anyway.” Her lyrium-burned fingers drift over the spine, then part the pages. “This is-“
“The Book of Shartan,” Velanna says, curt and quick but with her anger fading. “You’ll hear not how it began, but how it was almost won. Almost. This time, we won’t let them drive us out.”
With some help from the DA prompt generator! The prompt was “the smell of spring.”
Oghren will probably be the first Warden ever to get discharged for sexual harassment.
First of the sketches for the click-through milestones. Don’t forget to click an ad or two when you’re browsing, guys, and thank you so much!
Sketch progress:
First Milestone:Second Milestone:
Velanna and Oghren- Varric plaiting his chest hair
- Hipster Jowan and Librarian Finn
Third Milestone:
- Shirtless Garrett Hawke
- Isabela and Merrill, hat shopping
- Mage!Garrett and Morrigan
- Mordred and Nasrin
- Baby mage shenanigans
- Elliot Hawke
What is the matter with me why do I keep changing the style for every page! But but but that’s actually pretty cool. I remember experimenting with that tool in the autumn as well, but I think I may have forgotten about it. (That’s the SAI paintbrush with some weird settings, that is.)
I know they don’t have hair yet but felt like sharing the strangeness.
And now to shower and prepare for my purgatory.
