heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

"Oh, I don't understand much of it either," she reassures him, which is a somewhat flexible version of the truth but surely not a lie. Alchemy is a very broad subject. "But I am an extremely talented note taker and possess remarkably legible handwriting, and I trust once we return to Kirkwall that I may convince one of those aforementioned women to walk me through the whole of it."

She is in such good spirits that it is difficult not to simply lace their fingers together and take to swinging his arm a little as they progress. Indeed, she is en route to that very thing when she abruptly stops. And then dredges him backward by a few paces back to the mouth of a narrow alley. The alley takes a hard right turn behind the foremost shop front, but clearly leads deeper into the borough—

"This is familiar. I recognize the cat in that window."

And indeed there is a fat white cat in a window overlooking the alley. It has one leg hanging out of the window to maximize every scrap of sunlight available to it for bathing in.

"Brown and I tried very hard to pet it when he made to return me my rooms."

So clearly she'd been very drunk indeed. A cat would never have caught her attention otherwise.

At some point, whether over the course of the evening, tomorrow's lecture, or their journey back to Kirkwall, it will inevitably occur to Ellis that this knowledge will surely be put to use in the coming days. He'd been concerned about the mushrooms, without any concept of bigger and better things ahead.

However, in the present moment—

"He escorted you all the way back?" is posed mildly, while Ellis gives the cat it's due attention. He whistles softly, but the contribution passes without any particular attention from the feline in question. "Did he have to carry you part of the way as well?"

The addition comes as a light tease, Ellis' hand tightening briefly around hers.

"Oh stop. If you say it like that, I sound like a lush." His hand is afforded a reprimand in the form of a gentle slap, and then she is tugging him into the alleyway and in this new direction.

"No, we walked back more or less on our own two feet, thank you. And it was very considerate of him to do so. Imagine—a lone woman on her own trying to navigate a strange city back to her rooms. I might still be looking today. As I said, I suspect the two of you will get on marvelously."

Wysteris makes a sharp noise of triumph as they round that corner to discover that on the other side of the cat's house, the alley leads under a dank footbridge and then appears to open on the far side into a broader interior courtyard. Yes, this is very familiar.

"So long as he's been good to you, and continues to do so, I'm sure we will."

Though Ellis has his doubts about exactly how they'll get on. There are still plenty of moments where he doesn't understand how Tony and Wysteria have taken to him, when Ellis can't exactly keep up with their work. But he isn't inclined to entertain that conversation, when they're moving at a brisk clip towards what may or may not be the destination.

He wants to ask Are we meant to be coming this way? or Do you think there's much farther to go?

But instead, in the wake of Wysteria's triumph, he asks, "Why were you here before? A lecture like this one?"

What were the chances they'd crossed paths? She'd been part of Riftwatch far longer than Ellis; where had she traveled? Ellis hadn't come south often, but maybe there'd been a sliver of a chance that the only thing having kept him from bumping into some Inquisition mission was a day or two of travel delaying him or delaying them.

Edited (rewrites everything hours later mea culpa) 2021-03-16 02:42 (UTC)

"Something like it, yes. Soon after the Chantry declared that Rifters weren't demons, a series of lecturers gathered here to protest the decision as it handed been decided by a Divine. This was before Beatrix. Three years ago now, more or less. Myself and Madame—well, she was gone before you arrived—and Solas—Maker, now that I think of it it was all very strange company—came to sit and observe. I was to play the agreeable Rifter ambassador and answer questions about the Inquisition and where I came from and so on all while with a genial temperament. Not as a part of the conference. Merely taking advantage of it to save face, I suppose. That is how I met Misters Brown and Cooper and Miss Farling. They were only just students then."

They move under the dark shadow of the footbridge. She doesn't slow, dredging him along by the arm, for she has a very good feeling about this courtyard they are approaching. If memory serves, her bet is that their taproom may in fact be there waiting for them on the other side of this tunnel.

"Have you been to this region before?"

There comes a point, maybe a few paces into the shadowed tunnel, that Ellis shifts from being comfortably led to matching and slightly exceeding Wysteria's pace. Nothing in particular is said about it, but Ellis can only think that it might be wise to make sure he's the first thing anyone meets if they're foolish enough to jump out at them.

"I've passed through," Ellis says, which tends to be the answer he falls back on most of the time. "I certainly didn't spend enough time here to see the sights. I'd been heading north at the time, if I'm remembering correctly."

And now he has to consider what he remembers of rifters, whether or not he had been party to any discussion on whether or not they'd been demons. He can't recall, but then again, his focus had been very narrow for a long time. Things that fell outside of Warden affairs rarely caught his attention.

Which feels almost like a joke, when compared to his present circumstances.

Drawing her a little closer, just to ease the prickle of unease working across his skin, Ellis presses, "But before you question me at length about it, you'll have to tell me how successful you were at playing agreeable Rifter ambassador."

"Oh, quite successful. It's a wonder Enchanter Amsel didn't recruit me to the Diplomacy division the moment we returned to Kirkwall."

Is light hearted and punctuated with a sidelong glance in Ellis' direction. The lengthening of his stride may go without remark, but it certainly doesn't go unnoticed. Something tugs at the corner of Wysteria's mouth, and then is hidden away as she cinches herself a little closer to his side.

"I don't know that we made much of an impact on the lecturers themselves, but I believe I made an good impression on a selection of the younger scholars. Brown has assured me that I'm still regarded with some fondness in a few of his letters since."

Her chattering is loud in the tunnel, their footsteps ringing briskly as they approach its end and—

They pass smoothly out into the dusky lamplit courtyard without incident.

"Ah ha! Here we are!"

And indeed there is the White Boar, its broad barn doors thrown open in deference of the heat. Tables are spilling out into the courtyard, and somewhere in the shadowy interior someone is just beginning to scrape a fiddle into tune.

Stepping out into the open courtyard, Ellis' gaze sweeps the tables, the doors, takes in the murmur of conversation beneath the faltering beginnings of a tune.

Years ago, this might have been a place right out of Ellis' daydreams. He'd thought so often of traveling through a city, standing in a place like this. Years ago, he'd have been quietly elated at being stood in this exact spot, but now—

Well, elation is a harder thing to summon.

Rather than dwell, he turns his attention back to Wysteria.

"Inside or outside?" he asks Wysteria, hand breaking from her grasp to settle at her back. "I assume the dancing is inside, but if you'd rather a drink first..."

The night is not yet chilly enough to make it unpleasant to sit outside. There's a pair of skinny lads trading barbs as they light lanterns, throngs of students and otherwise observing the activity over their cups. Inside, the answering thump of a drum stutters, then halts. Ellis' fingers curl in just slightly over Wysteria's hip, brows raising slightly as he looks back for her answer.

"A drink first, I think. It sounds like the dancing hasn't started yet. But sit! I can elbow my way to the bar and with that grim look on our face you'll easily be able to bully these bookworms from a table."

Dwell he must, apparently. With a cheerful pat to the back of his hand, Wysteria looses herself from the quiet circle of his arm with all the alacrity of an arrow from a bow. She readily abandons him to his assignment, flitting through the rangy flocks of university students without either a backward glance or a second thought.

(If she is comfortable here, that there might be an alternative possibility is difficult to picture.)

There is absolutely some element of humor in being beaten to his offer to buy her a drink by Wysteria herself.

Reminded by her commentary, Ellis does make some attempt to look less serious as he considers the task at hand. His habit in most any tavern is to claim a seat as far to the periphery as possible, where he can more or less escape notice. But the White Boar is so open; there is no particular reasoning to the arrangement of tables, but they all exist more or less out in the open, with students passing freely from one to the other. There is an element of familiarity between most everyone here that Ellis finds himself unable to access.

By the time Wysteria returns, Ellis has laid his coat over one of the mismatched chairs alongside a table in the universal signal that a space is claimed. But Ellis himself is a few paces away, dusting hands absently together while the spindly barkeep offers a mixture of complaint and thanks, finger jabbing up at the delicately arranged lanterns before speeding after his partner.

"What've you gotten?" he asks, gravitating back to her, hands out to take the cups so she can settle herself.

The line of her attention drifts to the lanterns, but snaps back again the moment his focus shifts to her. Wysteria cheerfully thrusts both cups into his hands, making a great to do about taking the nuisance of her skirts so she can collapse down into one of the mismatched chairs.

"Wheat ale, apparently. Apparently it's meant to taste a bit of orange as well. Ah," she sighs appreciatively as she settles fully into the chair. "You know, I am thoroughly exhausted. I don't think I realized how hard those chairs in the gallery are until just the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if I were bruised all—"

Well.

She retrieves her cup from him and nods toward the lanterns.

"Making yourself useful already?"

Low, fond laughter fills the space left by Wysteria's abrupt stop. As she arranges her skirts, Ellis drags his own chair around to sit alongside her rather than across the patchy tabletop. The position coincidentally keeps his back to the assortment of shrubbery and the whole of the courtyard in his view, even though he's angled in towards Wysteria, slight, comfortable slouch in his chair as he leans an elbow on the arm nearest her.

"He was going to either set something on fire or fall over the fence," Ellis explains, turning the cup in his hands. "It'd have cast a pall over the evening."

Not that minor fires have ever actually detracted from their evenings at the Hightown house, but surely it's something to avoid in more public settings.

"Do you toast? he asks, tipping his cup towards her. "Is that a habit in Kalvad?"

There is, generally speaking, a suggested upper limit to the excitement one might have in a single day. Fires being—accidentally, for all of hers are on purpose, thank you—set in a cramped neighborhood of a major city surely must extend beyond that ceiling.

"Oh, only for nearly everything. A toast is a fine excuse to open a bottle or pour another glass. We are a well lubricated people, Mister Ellis."

She alters her cup's intended trajectory, lifting it rather more generally than merely directly to drink from.

"What shall we celebrate?"

A considering hum in answer, more for the We are a well lubricated people than for the matter of suitable celebration.

"I'd thought we might raise a glass to your triumphant return to Markham," Ellis settles on. "Seems a bit more noteworthy than raising our cups to good health."

Though Ellis is understandably more interested in preserving the latter than the former, he suspects it would lack the kind of flair Wysteria might expect out of a toast.

"Oh very well, if you insist. Though let us at least add —and this time with better company, for I doubt you are likely to leave us or reveal yourself as a rogue agent any time soon. And perhaps we might also hope that the next time we go off on some adventure which leads us to civilization, that it is somewhere new. All this time in Thedas, and I have managed to see only three of her cities. It is the greatest travesty when you consider all the traveling we do. Jungles and wilderness truly do abound."

Nonetheless, she flashes him a broad smile and raises her cup.

"Don't rule me out yet," Ellis deadpans, tapping his cup against hers before his serious expression softens into a smile. If anything, he's a rogue Warden, though as Vance and Adrasteia seem unconcerned, Ellis has resolved to set that problem aside for another day.

Toast accomplished, he sips from his cup, then shifts it to his opposite armrest and stretches a newly freed hand out to her armrest in silent request.

"Where would you go, if you could?"

North, Ellis assumes. Antiva City, maybe. What are the chances of Wysteria spending time wholly sight-seeing rather than tying some aspect of her journey into her work? He can't imagine she hasn't already traveled to Val Royeaux, considering Riftwatch's business, so that guess is ruled out. And Ferelden is dear to him, but he has few illusions about it's draw to anyone else, even Wysteria.

And he's interested to hear what she'd seek out under her own power.

She sip from her cup and then, pleased by the distinct tang at the beer's back end, takes a more enthusiastic drink of it as her spare hand bends to that silent inquiry. It is sweet—how often he reaches for her hand, to touch her side, or to set his hand quietly at her neck. It is monumentally sentimental.

Or maybe it is just a habit of Fereldans. Regardless, it's a very easy thing to reward with the touch of her own hand (particularly when the arms of the chair are so low and he is sat near enough that no one else is likely to see them being so ridiculous in public).

"Val Royeaux, first. Though I'm nearly positive I will dislike it. The only Royan I've met who wasn't by some degree intolerable is Bastien, and I count Lady Alexandrie Asgard in this though you must swear never to repeat it. She is very dear to me, but I sense that around others she can be somewhat overbred. But I should like to see the University and the—oh, what is the Chantry there called? I have heard the art there is remarkable. Let also include Cumberland with it, for technically I have been there briefly following the business in Nevarra City but I can't say that I was particularly of a kind to appreciate it. Nor to see much of it to begin with."

She takes a deep breath, then continues without relent.

"Otherwise, I should very much like to see Denerim, then Antiva City and Dairsmuid. And I hope very much that when de Foncé and I go looking for pyramids that we will have the opportunity to poke our noses into Qunandar. Every account I have read of it makes it sound quite spectacular. All this to say nothing of Minrathous! But I imagine that will come in due time, assuming we do our jobs correctly."

Here, finally, a pause. Wysteria squeezes his hand a little, leaning toward him so this next statement may be told quietly like a secret—

"Remind me when we return to Kirkwall and I will outline for you my ideal itinerary.

Idly, he turns their fingers together, thumbing along the soft stretch of her palm as Wysteria rattles off her wish list.

Val Royeaux is a surprise to him, but the rest—

"Aye, I will."

Is it transparent to answer so sincerely? The motivation behind it is likely very easily puzzled out: maybe he cannot take her so far north, but Denerim is close at hand, and doesn't Riftwatch have plenty of reason to visit Val Royeaux and Antiva City? How hard would it be to arrange? (Easier, maybe, with Tony in the Division Head's seat.) Ellis is quiet for a moment, taking a slow sip from his before speaking again.

"Maybe in the meantime you can tell me how you'd like to spend the rest of our time here, outside of the lecture," he questions. "Visiting some of the market stalls?"

"Oh certainly, though I have almost no spending money at present given the new papers throughout the downstairs of the Hightown house—oh," she says, flushing and hurrying to add—"Pretend I said nothing at all about that. I will be very cross if you find some means of sneaking around it, Mister Ellis. That is a personal matter and in any case, I am far more interested in sight seeing than in the markets."

She shifts forward a little in her chair, quickly gulping down a bit of beer between breaths in an attempt to both drink and speak at a clip all at once.

"The Chantry in Markham is evidently very picturesque, with lovely series of stained glass and some very remarkable gardens. And there is an excellent cider house who partners with one of the orchards outside the city which is rather well know for its great presses I should like to see if I can talk myself into it so I can look at the machine for myself. And I've heard very good things about certain Markham cheeses."

Is all said on more or less a single passionate breath, Wysteria's prodigious lung capacity stretched to its limit. She pauses only very briefly afterward, and that only because she is required to suck down a bit of fresh air before she can ask,

"And you, Mister Ellis? What should you like to do."

The answer that comes to him first: Accompany you.

But he knows instinctively that in spite of how true it is, it's an absence of an answer. It will disappoint her. So he takes a moment to scrounge for preference, rotating his cup on the arm of the chair.

"I'd like to see their library," is what he comes up with, after some consideration. "And their market."

Less precise, but honest.

"When I travel, I don't tend to have time to stop and look at the sights," he tells her, by way of explanation. "And I've never spent very much time thinking on what I'd do if I were given the possibility. So I'm happy to be guided by your preference."

"Never? Good gods, Mister Ellis, it's a wonder you've not wasted away!" She cries, quite mortified on his behalf. "If I were in the position to see so many of Thedas' great cities, but doomed to eternally pass through them, I would have lain down in a ditch out of protest. Or all my life force would have drained directly out of me."

Having taken a further fortifying drink, Wysteria sets her cup aside. She squeezes his hand.

"Not to worry. After tomorrow's lecture, we shall slip away and investigate the college's library."

"There are Wardens who spend time circulating in cities, or there used to be," Ellis tells her. "But I wasn't one of them."

The crooked little grin directed towards her is all easy amusement. It's no mystery why not. Ellis is Forces, not Diplomacy, for much the same reasons as he was not among the Wardens who would move through society to try and rekindle old loyalties or at least shore up support where it had inevitably waned.

But Ellis isn't given to the kind of slick, wheedling bargaining that he assumes goes along with such assignments. Passing through, on his way towards the next rumor of darkspawn or overrun village, had suited him better. Prompted now to think back, Ellis can't drum up anything he feels he'd missed out on in particular. It seems to him he's better inclined to appreciate small pleasures with company, though instead of saying as much to her, he questions, "You won't be bored?"

"Bored in a great library? It's as if you hardly know me, Mister Ellis."

She shoots him a very serious sidelong look. Beyond his shoulder, the chatter of conversation from the throngs of university scholars rises and falls; and inside the converted barn, the whine of the fiddle takes a turn toward actual music rather than only sound.

No rebuttal, just a gentle pass of his thumb along her knuckles again as her reassurance is accepted. It's settled. The library, then her list of things.

"Finish your drink," Ellis tells her instead, leaning forward to set his own cup down on the tabletop. "I want to dance with you."

Slowly, his fingers lace through hers. There's no sense of urgency. They have time. All evening, he's realizing. It's a very different thing than the dances he'd set aside for her at Satinalia, stealing her away and returning her to the festivities. There are no demands on her time.

A little teasing, Ellis continues, "And I won't count tonight against what I promised you for the next Riftwatch event."

Whatever that event might be. Next Satinalia? There hadn't been much occasion for parties recently, and Ellis doesn't foresee that changing.

"Oh, Mister Ellis," she chides, sympathetic but quite firm like patting a cheek. "You must know you've retreated from position by now. I've stopped keeping a tally of that sort of thing entirely."

If he is not obligated to dance with her at all the Riftwatch functions from now on, then what good is any of this? Honestly.

The line of her mouth quirks just a little to match the glint of mischief in her eye, her hand squeezes his, and then with the practice of a sauced sailor or jaded soldier thirsty from the front lines Wysteria downs what is left in her cup.

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notifs why