On an especially sweltering afternoon as Ellis is leaving to attend to a shift of guard duty, Wysteria reminds pauses in the process of coating a piece of paper in a highly poisonous substance (it's fine; she's wearing gloves) to call after him, saying, "Oh Mr. Ellis! If the day is too warm, I believe there may be something in your satchel which will help."
In his bag is a small parchment wrapped shape. It is the same small dog carved from dark wood. Scrawled on the parchment is—
Hold this and say 'Good dog.'
-W.A.
And in reply, the surface of the carved dog chills like a river stone. It wears off after a few hours, but should last the length of a guard rotation at least.
There is some ridiculous element to speaking aloud to a small figurine. But the pay off is worth it.
Whenever Wysteria arrives the next morning, the dog has been returned, along with a small bundle wrapped in an embroidered tea towel. Upon inspection, it's a number of pastries with a hastily written note instructing: for tea. Beneath the bundle is a piece of parchment folded into fours.
Wysteria,
Clever. And a help. Standing around in the sun was much more tolerable with your help. Thank you for the loan.
The tea towel and indeed a selection of the pastries (the ones which she doesn't eat herself in the interim) will see immediate use in her wooing of Valentine de Foncé's pocket book, and so is most appreciated. She says thank you in person when she next sees him.
And for a while—a series of days, or weeks, punctuated by sampling and closing Rifts, or division work, or missions spent briefly abroad—there is are no notes passed remarkable enough to warrant mention. And then, tucked alongside whatever he is using as a bookmark in whatever book he is currently toting around with him, appears an elaborately folded silhouette of a paper dog with two dot eyes and blacked in ears. It isn't meant to be unfolded; the obvious place to begin would be by pulling on its tail to free it from what appears to be a major fold, but all that accomplishes is causing the dog's mouth to open. It's a sweet, childish thing and comes with no accompanying note.
The new addition isn't found until later that evening, Ellis propped against the headboard of his bed and opening his book to have paper fall into his lap.
His urge is to put it into his pack along with the rest of her letters, but he props it on the side table beside the candle. It remains there for weeks after, likely until the weather turns and Ellis clears the side table of all items.
Shortly after the dog appears in his book, Ellis leaves a collection of Fereldan mythology with several stories featuring Calenhad Theirin earmarked. The note is folded on in half length-wise and set inside the front cover. A bouquet of daisies accompanies it.
Wysteria,
I came across this recently and thought you might be interested.
All save one of the daisies live the life most bouquets are doomed to: they are plunked into a convenient cup, decorating the kitchen table until they shrivel and die and eventually are tossed out into one of the garden planter beds.
But the exception spends a day behind her ear and comes back to the Gallows with her where it lives its brief life on the side table in her half of the room she keeps there.
A battered old book, well used and clearly purchased second hand, appears under his work gloves. On the inside page is written directly—
Dear Mr. Ellis,
Forgive me if you've read this already. It is a fictional account of rediscovering Calenhad Theirin's famed blade, Nemetos. I haven't read it myself, so you must recount the very best parts to me if you enjoy any of the text.
And Ellis does recount the best parts to her over the course of an afternoon, the pair of them idly playing a two-person game of cards Ellis half-remembers and is content to abide by Wysteria's embellishment to the rules. It turns out Ellis is a good storyteller. (Patiently answering Wysteria's questions in stride without breaking the flow of the story itself might have something to do with it.)
He leaves at dusk, after passing off a smaller book to her. The cover is faded beyond reading, but the pages are intact, if yellowed with age.
Wysteria,
This is a collection of stories about mabaris and their owners. Excuse the condition, and mind the binding.
It takes such a long time for her to return the book that it is all but guaranteed Wysteria has left it somewhere and forgotten about it entirely.
Only that isn't it at all. When the book is finally returned—simply set carefully beside his things—one sunny afternoon as he works in the garden, the purpose behind the extraordinarily long hold becomes clear.
Some repair has been done to the binding—the top layer of the spine peeled carefully back, a thick paper marbled with shades of darkening blue and bright ribbons of white used to reinforce it and then covered again with that tattered rectangle of the original spine so that only the edges of that marbled papers and its tabs folded over the inside of either board are visible. It is not quite like folding a letter into an elaborate shapes, but it isn't so far removed from it either. She isn't certain she should have done it. And so from some corner planter box where she is perched and meant to be watching while Mr. Dickerson's enchanted snake slithers through stalks of flowers and under the broad splay of the lavender bush, Wysteria instead watches his reception of it from the corner of her eye.
It has not yet occurred to him to be worried about what he'd left for Wysteria. If she has misplaced it within the house, it will turn up in the course of Fitz's re-cataloging of the library. And if it does not—
Then it is gone, like all the rest. (Is the book an heirloom simply because it is the only thing that Ellis carried out of that house with him, forgotten in his back pocket?) He tells himself it is not important. It was an undeserved boon to carry it with him for so long.
But there is a sharp, undeniable pang in his chest when he lifts the book from where it has been laid beside his satchel and mace and recognizes the title. For a moment, it is hard to draw a breath. His hand passes gently over the newly-applied paper, the carefully replaced spine, before he puts the book into his satchel.
When he crosses the garden, his hand settles between Wysteria's shoulder blades before he leans down to drop a kiss to the top of her head.
"That was very kind," he tells her, without continuing: and undeserved. "I'm grateful."
In the shadow of the narrow little yard as the enchanted snake winds its rustling way through the planter, Wysteria tilts her face up to look at him.
She'd been halfway through her impromptu book surgery, with the spine cut into pieces and the pages in the delicate process of being resealed, when it had occurred to her that perhaps this battered old thing was precious somehow—as if by changing any part of it, she might be ruining it as a token. After all, the book's pages are very faded and the edges of the cover rather rounded out and banged blunt from the wear of travel. Maybe these things matter. But of course by then it had been rather too late to do anything about it other than carry on and hope for the best.
Some measure of her relief must show clearly in her expression, in her careful (upside-down) examination of him.
"Are you? You must think nothing of it. It really took no time at all," is naturally contradicted by how long she has been in possession of the little book. A printer was consulted. An essay on the subject was read. She is a very poor hand at marbling paper and had ruined the first few sheets of stock she'd attempted to color.
She knows how it must seem and so veers away from that point with all expediency.
"No time at all" is not the truth. Ellis doesn't need to call her on that, because it changes nothing. Wysteria did something kind for him when she hadn't needed to, and Ellis understands exactly what it is to want as little attention called to that as possible. Is this garden not something similar?
At the question, Ellis reaches over to draw one of the buckets over to sit on. He has some sense that whatever she's going to ask might be something he'd rather not answer, but on the off chance it's about the book, about one turn of phrase Ellis had read a thousand times but never paid particular mind to while Wysteria had plucked it out to consider how it relates to the Chantry or some historical event or how it may be an allegory for this or that, he'd like to be comfortable.
"I think so," he answers her, elbows set on his knees, hands folded loosely between them. "I can't promise I have the answer you're looking for."
Which tends to be the case sometimes, when they talk about literature.
Asking in that way, she ought to have her question teed up and ready to strike the moment he agrees to make an attempt.
The trouble of course is that she has a half dozen. A full dozen. A long series of miscellaneous inquiries which she has saved up like some frugal old bat who can afford to buy whatever she likes but has been hemming and hawing on what is actually worth the coin.
(Oh, to be a penny pinching dowager, she thinks. The whim is unrelated and distant.)
What she settles on, with a rising sensation of foolishness and a slight grimace is—
"Is everything... well with you?"
The view from the corner of her eye is very sharp when she cares for it to be.
Something in his expression settles slightly, as if bracing against the inquiry.
There are two answers to the question. Ellis could simply opt for the one closest at hand: he is well in this moment, healthy and out of danger of immediate injury. But if Wysteria is asking, it is because she has discerned some wrinkle.
But this knowledge doesn't guide Ellis in how to navigate it.
"Do I seem unwell?" he asks finally, with the air of a man fumbling in the dark, seeking some touchstone to guide himself forward.
"No, no. Nothing like that at all," she is quick to say, her attention veering away from him to the snake in the planter. She reaches out to touch along the tip of its tail, the creature's muscular little body rippling under her fingertip.
(Evidently direct exposure had been the right course to take in tackling certain aversions; congratulations on your discerning eye, Mr. Dickerson.)
"It's just the polite thing to do on occasion. To ask someone how they are. And also, it occured to me that other day that some time ago you had seemed slightly dissatisfied with the circumstances of your association with—Well. With Mr. Stark and myself. I was somewhat distracted at the time and failed to properly return to the subject to see it settled, but I suppose later to be better than never. Particularly now that there is Mr. Fitz, and de Foncé has elected to be so rude, and as we are all of us are being rather demanding of your time and expertise with respect to the Orzammar affair. That's all."
It takes Ellis a moment to think back, to remember Wysteria's tears in the alcove of the library and what he had told her then. It is still true.
His gaze drops briefly to the hands, the ground beneath their feet. The grass will need some attention here, he thinks vaguely before wrenching his focus back to Wysteria.
"I'm not dissatisfied with your friendship, or Tony's," Ellis tells her. Maybe he should be. Maybe he should have avoided being led into this situation at all, or at least ashamed of himself for not extricating himself from it. "You aren't troubling me with any of this, Orzammar or otherwise."
Well, not troubling in the way she means. Ellis is habitually troubled by how close experiments often veer towards danger, but that's a separate matter.
"None of it's to do with you," Ellis presses, sincere if not particularly illuminating. "I'm lucky to have your friendship."
Wysteria cuts a glance in his direction, something there on the tip of her tongue that she puts on reserve as she instead moves to fetch the snake from the planter bed. Like a well trained dog, the reptile answers Wysteria's simple command of 'Come here,' by bending back over itself. It slithers up into her hand and coils about the wrist.
With the snake transferred from the planter into her lap, she finds the thought still pressing despite how inconsiderate it is. Can't have a mysterious past without some hard limits lying around,' Mr. Stark had said of their mutual friend, but she has found more poked holes than barriers.
Is there something troubling him? Maybe, but it won't do either of them any good for him to admit any of the sins rattling around his head.
"I'd rather not talk about things like that, Wysteria," he says, because he cannot bring himself to lie to her, nor to dismiss her out of hand. She is perceptive, and he doesn't care to divert that or to try and fool her into mistrusting her own impression.
But he doesn't want certain aspects of his life to touch hers. It leaves him with one option forward, which is stating his wish plainly and hoping for the best.
It's a strange thing—to be both wrong in one direction and correct in another. But there's hardly any shame in modifying one's understanding of a thing, or a person, or whatever you please. And what Mr. Stark doesn't know, he won't needlessly crow over.
"Well, then I suppose I can hardly be expected to argue the point," is all pragmatism as she turns her hand in her lap so the snake can continue to sunbathe in some patch of light dappling her knee.
She looks at him, quite severe.
"But should it ever have to do with myself, or Misters Stark or Fitz or de Foncé or anyone else, then you must say so immediately and I will see about correcting it."
The sweetness of that offer catches him off-guard. It's overwhelming, to be afforded that kind of care. He has done nothing in his life to deserve this kind of loyalty, and yet, here is Wysteria, offering it up in absolute sincerity.
Ellis gets to his feet, leans down to kiss her forehead, hand light at her shoulder.
"You're too good," he tells her. Too good for him, perhaps too good for the whole of Thedas. "I'll remember that."
Recall this when she describes wanting to put slugs enchanted with lightning into people.
"Nonsense. Goodness has very little to do with it, Mr. Ellis," she informs him in no uncertain terms, pinching the back of his hand at her shoulder. "Now stop that. Your face is intolerably scratchy."
Maybe the lightening slugs are part of the charm. It's hard to say. Regardless, he doesn't contradict her. He's laughing quietly as he straightens up, lifts his satchel.
"I'll see you tomorrow," he promises. "Be careful with Richard's snake."
"Please. The two of us are quite good friends now, isn't that right?" This is addressed to the snake, who blinks back with its beady black eye and tastes the air with its dark tongue.
And that is that. For some time after, all traded notes and books and flowers and favors are incidental.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
In his bag is a small parchment wrapped shape. It is the same small dog carved from dark wood. Scrawled on the parchment is—
And in reply, the surface of the carved dog chills like a river stone. It wears off after a few hours, but should last the length of a guard rotation at least.
no subject
Whenever Wysteria arrives the next morning, the dog has been returned, along with a small bundle wrapped in an embroidered tea towel. Upon inspection, it's a number of pastries with a hastily written note instructing: for tea. Beneath the bundle is a piece of parchment folded into fours.
no subject
And for a while—a series of days, or weeks, punctuated by sampling and closing Rifts, or division work, or missions spent briefly abroad—there is are no notes passed remarkable enough to warrant mention. And then, tucked alongside whatever he is using as a bookmark in whatever book he is currently toting around with him, appears an elaborately folded silhouette of a paper dog with two dot eyes and blacked in ears. It isn't meant to be unfolded; the obvious place to begin would be by pulling on its tail to free it from what appears to be a major fold, but all that accomplishes is causing the dog's mouth to open. It's a sweet, childish thing and comes with no accompanying note.
no subject
His urge is to put it into his pack along with the rest of her letters, but he props it on the side table beside the candle. It remains there for weeks after, likely until the weather turns and Ellis clears the side table of all items.
Shortly after the dog appears in his book, Ellis leaves a collection of Fereldan mythology with several stories featuring Calenhad Theirin earmarked. The note is folded on in half length-wise and set inside the front cover. A bouquet of daisies accompanies it.
no subject
But the exception spends a day behind her ear and comes back to the Gallows with her where it lives its brief life on the side table in her half of the room she keeps there.
A battered old book, well used and clearly purchased second hand, appears under his work gloves. On the inside page is written directly—
no subject
He leaves at dusk, after passing off a smaller book to her. The cover is faded beyond reading, but the pages are intact, if yellowed with age.
no subject
Only that isn't it at all. When the book is finally returned—simply set carefully beside his things—one sunny afternoon as he works in the garden, the purpose behind the extraordinarily long hold becomes clear.
Some repair has been done to the binding—the top layer of the spine peeled carefully back, a thick paper marbled with shades of darkening blue and bright ribbons of white used to reinforce it and then covered again with that tattered rectangle of the original spine so that only the edges of that marbled papers and its tabs folded over the inside of either board are visible. It is not quite like folding a letter into an elaborate shapes, but it isn't so far removed from it either. She isn't certain she should have done it. And so from some corner planter box where she is perched and meant to be watching while Mr. Dickerson's enchanted snake slithers through stalks of flowers and under the broad splay of the lavender bush, Wysteria instead watches his reception of it from the corner of her eye.
There is no note.
no subject
It has not yet occurred to him to be worried about what he'd left for Wysteria. If she has misplaced it within the house, it will turn up in the course of Fitz's re-cataloging of the library. And if it does not—
Then it is gone, like all the rest. (Is the book an heirloom simply because it is the only thing that Ellis carried out of that house with him, forgotten in his back pocket?) He tells himself it is not important. It was an undeserved boon to carry it with him for so long.
But there is a sharp, undeniable pang in his chest when he lifts the book from where it has been laid beside his satchel and mace and recognizes the title. For a moment, it is hard to draw a breath. His hand passes gently over the newly-applied paper, the carefully replaced spine, before he puts the book into his satchel.
When he crosses the garden, his hand settles between Wysteria's shoulder blades before he leans down to drop a kiss to the top of her head.
"That was very kind," he tells her, without continuing: and undeserved. "I'm grateful."
no subject
She'd been halfway through her impromptu book surgery, with the spine cut into pieces and the pages in the delicate process of being resealed, when it had occurred to her that perhaps this battered old thing was precious somehow—as if by changing any part of it, she might be ruining it as a token. After all, the book's pages are very faded and the edges of the cover rather rounded out and banged blunt from the wear of travel. Maybe these things matter. But of course by then it had been rather too late to do anything about it other than carry on and hope for the best.
Some measure of her relief must show clearly in her expression, in her careful (upside-down) examination of him.
"Are you? You must think nothing of it. It really took no time at all," is naturally contradicted by how long she has been in possession of the little book. A printer was consulted. An essay on the subject was read. She is a very poor hand at marbling paper and had ruined the first few sheets of stock she'd attempted to color.
She knows how it must seem and so veers away from that point with all expediency.
"Can I ask you something, Mr. Ellis?"
no subject
At the question, Ellis reaches over to draw one of the buckets over to sit on. He has some sense that whatever she's going to ask might be something he'd rather not answer, but on the off chance it's about the book, about one turn of phrase Ellis had read a thousand times but never paid particular mind to while Wysteria had plucked it out to consider how it relates to the Chantry or some historical event or how it may be an allegory for this or that, he'd like to be comfortable.
"I think so," he answers her, elbows set on his knees, hands folded loosely between them. "I can't promise I have the answer you're looking for."
Which tends to be the case sometimes, when they talk about literature.
no subject
The trouble of course is that she has a half dozen. A full dozen. A long series of miscellaneous inquiries which she has saved up like some frugal old bat who can afford to buy whatever she likes but has been hemming and hawing on what is actually worth the coin.
(Oh, to be a penny pinching dowager, she thinks. The whim is unrelated and distant.)
What she settles on, with a rising sensation of foolishness and a slight grimace is—
"Is everything... well with you?"
The view from the corner of her eye is very sharp when she cares for it to be.
no subject
There are two answers to the question. Ellis could simply opt for the one closest at hand: he is well in this moment, healthy and out of danger of immediate injury. But if Wysteria is asking, it is because she has discerned some wrinkle.
But this knowledge doesn't guide Ellis in how to navigate it.
"Do I seem unwell?" he asks finally, with the air of a man fumbling in the dark, seeking some touchstone to guide himself forward.
no subject
(Evidently direct exposure had been the right course to take in tackling certain aversions; congratulations on your discerning eye, Mr. Dickerson.)
"It's just the polite thing to do on occasion. To ask someone how they are. And also, it occured to me that other day that some time ago you had seemed slightly dissatisfied with the circumstances of your association with—Well. With Mr. Stark and myself. I was somewhat distracted at the time and failed to properly return to the subject to see it settled, but I suppose later to be better than never. Particularly now that there is Mr. Fitz, and de Foncé has elected to be so rude, and as we are all of us are being rather demanding of your time and expertise with respect to the Orzammar affair. That's all."
no subject
His gaze drops briefly to the hands, the ground beneath their feet. The grass will need some attention here, he thinks vaguely before wrenching his focus back to Wysteria.
"I'm not dissatisfied with your friendship, or Tony's," Ellis tells her. Maybe he should be. Maybe he should have avoided being led into this situation at all, or at least ashamed of himself for not extricating himself from it. "You aren't troubling me with any of this, Orzammar or otherwise."
Well, not troubling in the way she means. Ellis is habitually troubled by how close experiments often veer towards danger, but that's a separate matter.
"None of it's to do with you," Ellis presses, sincere if not particularly illuminating. "I'm lucky to have your friendship."
no subject
With the snake transferred from the planter into her lap, she finds the thought still pressing despite how inconsiderate it is. Can't have a mysterious past without some hard limits lying around,' Mr. Stark had said of their mutual friend, but she has found more poked holes than barriers.
None of it's to do with you, suggests—
"But there is something. Troubling you."
no subject
"I'd rather not talk about things like that, Wysteria," he says, because he cannot bring himself to lie to her, nor to dismiss her out of hand. She is perceptive, and he doesn't care to divert that or to try and fool her into mistrusting her own impression.
But he doesn't want certain aspects of his life to touch hers. It leaves him with one option forward, which is stating his wish plainly and hoping for the best.
no subject
"Well, then I suppose I can hardly be expected to argue the point," is all pragmatism as she turns her hand in her lap so the snake can continue to sunbathe in some patch of light dappling her knee.
She looks at him, quite severe.
"But should it ever have to do with myself, or Misters Stark or Fitz or de Foncé or anyone else, then you must say so immediately and I will see about correcting it."
no subject
Ellis gets to his feet, leans down to kiss her forehead, hand light at her shoulder.
"You're too good," he tells her. Too good for him, perhaps too good for the whole of Thedas. "I'll remember that."
no subject
"Nonsense. Goodness has very little to do with it, Mr. Ellis," she informs him in no uncertain terms, pinching the back of his hand at her shoulder. "Now stop that. Your face is intolerably scratchy."
sticks bow on this
"I'll see you tomorrow," he promises. "Be careful with Richard's snake."
sticks second bow on top of first bow
And that is that. For some time after, all traded notes and books and flowers and favors are incidental.