There's food in one of Bastien's hands. The other is draped over Ruadh's bulky neck, fingers crooked to scratch his shoulder with a touch of reverence. But he looks at the stones with a smile while he's shuffling to stuff the last of his bread into his mouth and the last of his cheese on the stair next to his hip. Then the stones on his knees. They don't fit together like puzzle pieces, but he while he chews his mouthful he turns them until the curves and edges are complementary.
"No leaves," he says after. Not disappointment; rocks serve him just as well. Only wonder. The blight-born deserts of Orlais still have their stubborn plants and oases. He'd always thought the stories about the Anderfels, stripped so thoroughly of its life and natural cycles that a corpse couldn't decompose in the dust, must be exaggerated. But perhaps not.
Maybe he'll see it someday. Ideally not for very long. Not for a solitary hike to Weisshaupt and back.
He looks sideways at Ellis. Competing pressures: to explain himself and to not make excuses. To never give anyone more pieces of himself than they first give him of themselves, and to acknowledge—if only to himself—that he's taken pieces Ellis didn't intend to give him. Fit some of them together, staring at his ceiling. His confidence it was the only one of its kind: something from the rifts. Ellis' possession of it: Stark's or Poppell's, most likely. The dance lessons, the poetry, his sentimentality over a ring—Bastien's confident enough to bet his money on Wysteria.
His cheeks puff up with his capitulating exhale. He sounds more self-deprecating and embarrassed than solemn about the confession: "Bastien is my name. It's all anyone has called me since I was a boy." Give or take a few dozen brief false identities and his five-year stint as Edouard Almary, Honest Printer. That's not what he means. "But it isn't the name my parents gave to me, and I'm—" Hypocritical, after using the ring to investigate everyone he could, after opening Ellis' letters, after everything about his entire life and line of work. "—touchy, I suppose."
A bear with a burr he oughtn't have snarled at anyone else about.
no subject
"No leaves," he says after. Not disappointment; rocks serve him just as well. Only wonder. The blight-born deserts of Orlais still have their stubborn plants and oases. He'd always thought the stories about the Anderfels, stripped so thoroughly of its life and natural cycles that a corpse couldn't decompose in the dust, must be exaggerated. But perhaps not.
Maybe he'll see it someday. Ideally not for very long. Not for a solitary hike to Weisshaupt and back.
He looks sideways at Ellis. Competing pressures: to explain himself and to not make excuses. To never give anyone more pieces of himself than they first give him of themselves, and to acknowledge—if only to himself—that he's taken pieces Ellis didn't intend to give him. Fit some of them together, staring at his ceiling. His confidence it was the only one of its kind: something from the rifts. Ellis' possession of it: Stark's or Poppell's, most likely. The dance lessons, the poetry, his sentimentality over a ring—Bastien's confident enough to bet his money on Wysteria.
His cheeks puff up with his capitulating exhale. He sounds more self-deprecating and embarrassed than solemn about the confession: "Bastien is my name. It's all anyone has called me since I was a boy." Give or take a few dozen brief false identities and his five-year stint as Edouard Almary, Honest Printer. That's not what he means. "But it isn't the name my parents gave to me, and I'm—" Hypocritical, after using the ring to investigate everyone he could, after opening Ellis' letters, after everything about his entire life and line of work. "—touchy, I suppose."
A bear with a burr he oughtn't have snarled at anyone else about.
"Something to work on."