wheretheferngrows | [IC/OOC] Contact

Fern's naturally chatty and precocious nature has taken a back seat to grief--and other awkwardness--over the past month. She's kept to herself, save for the occasional outing with Adalia, and kept occupied with her training under Nell and the beginnings of her lessons learning about the Dalish with Beleth and Sorrel. She spends a lot of time with her mule, Rooster, and her unlikely friend, Simon--a templar.

She also tends to enjoy sleeping in on select mornings, and so all of the racket that Colin is making as he rushes about hither and thither in their shared quarters ultimately earns him a somewhat annoyed scowl from Fern, as her head of messy hair re-emerges from her cocoon of blankets. "Do you have to make so much noise--" she's in the process of groggily snapping at this silly shemlen--

--when she spots the enormous bloody chef's knife protruding from beneath his pillow. She stares at it, eyes widening, and then looks from it to Colin, then back again. shit. is he a murderer? .....he's definitely a murderer.

Colin looks back at her, waving an apologetic hand. "Sorry, sorry. I'm just. Late." His hair is already halfway out of its braid but he makes time to do a double take at her terrified face. And follows her gaze to the...

Oh, is that all?

"Sorry," he says again, sweeping toward the bed to arrange the pillow back on top of the knife. "Sorry, we'll put that...there, it's fine, it's just a precaution, you know how things go."

He has seen her hanging around that templar. Can't be too careful.

Fern is now sitting bolt upright in her nest of blankets--some of which she has yanked up to her chest in an effort to preserve her, uh, modesty--but her look of wide-eyed anxiety now gives way to incredulity. Just in case?

"Just in case of what?" she blurts out. Still holding the blankets up around her chest, she fumbles for her tunic and, somehow, manages to pull it over her nightshirt without getting the blanket stuck between two layers of fabric in the process. "I'm the only other one in here!"

"Sorry," he says again, because he can't say that enough, he really doesn't want to say it too few times. "It's just..."

It would make sense if he told her about being in the Circle, but he's not telling people about the Circle. He's not a mage anymore, except in the sense where his connection to the Fade is magical and not severed and he's prone to weird demon nightmares. Those are all a lot of symptoms, though, not a label. He stops what he's doing, huffs out a breath, and slows down. Sits on the bed. His mind races, trying to come up with a suitable lie that won't freak her out more than she's already freaked out. The mage thing is ruled out by default. Spent time in jail? No way.

"I just...feel weird, in this place. I grew up as a kid on the streets in Denerim and you had to be careful who might sneak around when you're asleep. I mean I know you're not going to nick anything, but anyone can come through that door." A pause, then more pleadingly, "Old habits?"

Complete bullshit, of course, and he'll have to remember to keep telling this lie going forward, but he doesn't want to spook her more than she has already been spooked by the crazy man who sleeps with a knife.

For a bit of dramatic irony, the mage story likely would have gone over quite well. She's an apostate too, after all.

When he slouches down onto the edge of his bed and starts spilling the details of her story, her wariness of him does decrease some, reverting first to irritation (he'd woken her up far too early, for one thing), but finally to something like resigned tolerance. Old habits? ...well, all right.

She frowns at him again, but there's a touch less annoyance in her expression now. "All right," she decides, then gives him a pointed look. "But you shouldn't sleep with that thing under your pillow. What if it comes loose from the sheathe with all your noisy tossing and turning--" yes, she's well aware of that, too, "--and you end up, you know--" Here, she gracefully mimes stabbing herself in the neck.

He wrinkles his nose. "Yes, well, if I tie it shut, it'll be a scramble to get it off if I'm trying to save you from a nighttime Crow assassin." He's joking now. Well. Half-joking. He picks up the knife and peers at it. "I don't really know how you tie one of these shut, it's not a sword."

"...Crow assassins?" She regards him archly, but there's the beginnings of a little smile on her face now.

When he picks up his knife to look at it like it's a strange and foreign object, Fern gives her head a little shake. "I don't think you're meant to tie that one," she says. "It looks like a kitchen knife." ...did he nick it from the kitchens? That sounds like a problem for the kitchen staff, and not for her.

"Here," she starts, and fetches out a small paring knife from her pack. It's in a narrow leather sheath complete with a bit of twine drawstring ensuring the blade stays snug and secure in her bag. "You need a leather sheath designed for the shape of the blade. This was my ma's," she adds, lest she give the impression of being a skilled tanner. "I bet the quartermaster could set you up with something."

There, see? She's being helpful.

Already he's not doing well trying to pretend he's streetwise. But at least she's not afraid he's going to stab her in her sleep anymore. He scoots over to look at the knife, examine and admire the craftsmanship.

"Maybe," he says softly. "I'm a cook, I sort of default to the kitchen knives, I already have those. I don't really know what to look for for...this." Yeah, she'll probably see through the lie about street life before long, but maybe he'll come up with a better lie by then.

She hasn't seen through it yet--what would she know about living life on the streets of Denerim? She grew up on farms in the rolling country hills... near enough to Denerim when she was young, but rarely ever within it. Still, it's a place to start, and it does seem a bit odd for them to continue sharing this space together without getting to know each other a bit better.

"I'm from Denerim originally too, actually," she says, as though the accent alone weren't enough to give it away. Then she tips her head, conceding with a guilty smile, "Well--nearly Denerim. I lived on a farm just outside the city when I was quite little, 'til the Blight happened anyway. Then we went north, to my da's home outside Ansburg. But these Marchers," she adds, with a decidedly long sigh as she says the words, "they never let you forget you're Fereldan."

Or a knife-ear. She keeps that one to herself.

That gets a grin from Colin. In the Circle, he'd always found he had more in common with the elves than with most of the humans. Not for racism reasons, by any means, but certainly their lives had been more similar. Maybe Colin didn't live on the street, but that had only been because of his mother's tenacity and creativity. His father's unskilled labor at the docks had barely paid rent, let alone food for five mouths.

"I grew up in the city. My father worked the docks, my mother ran a food stall. Classic poor person love story, an ordinary seaman falls in love with a beautiful Antivan woman and carries her back home, where they have more children than they can probably afford but make it work anyway. Those people, these Marchers, they have no idea what it takes. The sort of people who make it through bad circumstances, those are the real heroes of society. Well." He gestures with his head towards nothing in particular. "Those and the ones who save the world, I guess."

Edited 2018-01-02 04:31 (UTC)

"Did you have any sisters?" Fern asks when he mentions his enormous family; there's almost a note of longing in her voice when she sighs and adds irritably, "I've got four brothers, two on either side of me. It would have been so nice to have a sister."

As for the rest of what he says, she looks almost startled by his assessment of their fellow working folk--not offended by any means, but as though he'd given her a perspective on her own parents and family that she hadn't thought to consider before. "I guess you're right," she says thoughtfully and looks down at the little paring knife in her hands, considers the leather sheathe her mother created out of hide she'd tanned herself.

She grows quiet, suddenly, introspective and still.

Colin bursts out in surprised laughter. "I had four sisters. Three older, one younger. I must have got some of yours, and you got some of mine."

But Fern isn't cheerful any longer. His laughter dies quickly when he sees that. Did he do something wrong? He glances self-consciously about the room before looking back to her and clearing his throat.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Did I say something wrong?"

Fern looks back at him in alarm at that question, startled by it, and then abruptly feels a pang of guilt. "Oh--no, no, you didn't," she hastily assures him, then self-consciously threads a bit of hair behind one of her ears. She drops her hands into her lap. "I'm just... realizing that I used to believe all sorts of things, before coming here. They were all so childish."

A fluttering smile as relief flits across his face.

"Did you?" Colin is late to open the store, but it's not like there will be a crowd lined up at this hour, and it seems his roommate needs someone to talk to. "What sorts of things?"

"Oh, you know," and here she gives a little wave of her hand, self-consciously smiling down at her lap. "Going off on an adventure all on my own seemed like such an exciting and romantic idea, before I actually went through with it. Now all I've got to show for it is... this." She tugs her glove off of her hand to reveal the anchor mark in her palm, then pulls the glove back on. (Looking at it for too long makes her quite uncomfortable.)

"I was going to join the Grey Wardens," she admits, and one look at her face should be enough to indicate that that dream fell through.

His eyes widen slightly, as does his smile. "You're braver than I am, then," he says with a flicker of laughter. "I can't imagine fighting. And the Grey Wardens, with all the rumors, I'm guessing you must have been doubly brave to seek them out now."

The smile fades, his brow furrows in curiosity. "Could I see the mark?"

That incredibly expensive (for the Chantry) education ought to be good for something.

That question startles her into silence. Then, with a quick nod, she pulls the glove off again and slips off of the bed to walk over to Colin. She offers her hand out for him to inspect.

As with all the other anchor marks, hers is a dull green glow in her palm; it seems to shift and undulate in the light, but otherwise doesn't cause any distortion in her skin.

"It's very strange," she admits softly.

It is strange. Colin resists reaching for it, but it draws him. He can feel the spirit energy like a wind, like the touch of cool water against heated skin. The Veil is desperately thin here, and this mark does something to it. It has been so, so long since he let himself feel this power, this force all around him. Like eddies and whorls of wind, all spirit energy around them is moved by this mark. He wants to play those strands of magic like a harp.

But he is not a mage. He is--he is not a mage. He blinks rapidly, breaking himself of some sort of bewitchment.

"Does it hurt?" he asks softly.

There's something unnerving in the way that Colin looks at her palm, and though she can't place its exact origin, she knows she doesn't like it. Frowning, she draws her hand back, but doesn't go to put distance between them. Not yet, anyway. Maybe he's just weird.

"Not now, no," she says, then admits, "When I'm near those fade rifts, it aches badly. I suppose it's reacting to something in the Veil."

She turns her head some to consider him, askance. "Why are you so curious about it?"

>:c

He looks up at her tone, then his mouth drops open as he realizes what this looked like, staring at her hand like it's not a part of her body.

"I'm--I'm so sorry," he stammers, hands coming up placatingly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to gawk at you, I've just never seen anything like that, but it doesn't matter, it's not meant to be on display. I'm sorry, that was really rude of me, wasn't it?"

Already she's tugging the glove back on, frowning reprovingly back at him. "Don't know about rude," she mumbles, "I just wondered if you were going to try to, I don't know, touch it or something."

A glance out the nearby window lets her know how high the sun has gotten... as well as the time. Oh bother. "Oh, I should get to the gardens," she sighs, then looks back to Colin again. Her expression softens; he's all right, for a shemlen. "I'll see you this evening, won't I?"

A glimmer of a smile. "Of course. I'm Colin, by the way."

"Fern," she replies, smiling again. "I'll see you later, Colin."

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