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

"Your uncles," she repeats in tones of 'oooh' and 'ahhh.' "I don't think my uncles ever taught me anything, save perhaps how to be exceptionally dull over dinner. They are all from my mother's side and most of them work in the government and I fully believe it has devoured all spirit they once had. Oh, except for Uncle Randolphus. But no one has seen him in person for ages."

And then, in a much more sober tone—

"Should the buttons on these trousers go up the left side or the right? How is anyone meant to know the front from back?"

"The right," Ellis advises her, though he declines to offer any theories as to identifying the front from the back.

Instead, having made his way to the gently sloping edge of the pond, he crouches alongside to test the water. A little scattering of tiny silver fish dart away from his fingers as he flicks them across the surface.

"Are you stalling?" he asks, a very genuine sounding question that may or may not be intended as teasing provocation.

"Stalling," gasps back the provoked shrub. "Need I remind you that I am already quite proficient in the water and that there is virtually no reason whatsoever for a delay. Just because you may strip down to whatever you like in ten or twenty seconds doesn't mean everyone can."

Which is true enough, though perhaps not the entirety of it. The legs of the trousers look very silly tucked into the tops of camel colors boots, and she can only imagine what the rest of her looks like.

She hesitates for a moment, studying the shadow of Ellis through the gaps in the shrubbery's foliage as she fusses with the lacing of the tunic in an attempt to cinch it tighter or higher, though the lay of it is plenty conservative.

"I'm coming out," is announced clearly, for otherwise she will never do it. Already she is elbowing her way back out of the brush, bringing her dress and shift and stays and stockings and various ribbons and so on with her. "And I beg you to avoid too close a study because I look ridiculous."

She looks—like someone awkward over being caught in trousers, mostly. Not ill fitting necessarily, save perhaps around a kind of stair climbing sturdiness of the thigh, but certainly ill worn. Maker forbid she linger over the discomfort though; instead she stuffs her unworn clothes into one of the saddlebags and coming briskly skittering down toward the water as her hands some vaguely unconscious effort at shielding whatever falls between navel and knees.

Straightening at the first rustle of the bushes, Ellis is positioned well enough to turn to observe Wysteria's march from shrubbery to saddlebag and then the apprehensive progression towards him in all it's glory.

Ellis doesn't laugh. (Intelligent enough, perhaps, to know that mirth would not be well-received.) But he can't help his smile, or that for a moment as he does exactly what he'd been instructed against and looks her over, that all the affection he has for her is very clear on his face.

Between them, he reaches down to catch Wysteria's hands and interrupt their fluttering attempts to settle somewhere around her waist.

"You are very good to humor me," he tells her first, very solemn. "And you are still very pretty."

Ellis has stripped down to his tunic and trousers, laces loose at his collar, feet bare. A smile twitches at his lips, then is fought back as Ellis lapses back to seriousness.

"But I'm going to have you take the boots off as well."

"Oh course I still am," Wysteria snips back at him, an absent grumble even as she makes no attempt to either dislodge her hands from his or shove him back into the water (which is, for the record, what he deserves for that absurd look on his face).

That sense of heroically laboring under the indignity of his requests persists as she toes out of her boots and allows her attention to skirt toward suspiciously assessing the water.

"Remind me to bottle some of this before we go. I have run entirely out of the river water I took on my last trip and it is so hard to find fresh water in Kirkwall that didn't come from a well. Well water is a terrible option for a component case."

Are, at best, only half words he will parse. But that isn't really the point.

She kicks the second boot off and up the bank.

"I will," Ellis assures her, though she's right: the reasoning behind bottling it doesn't quite register in any meaningful way. He doesn't ask. There's always the chance she decides to explain in detail on the ride back.

Instead, seeing her feet suitably bare, Ellis draws her along with him down to the edge of the water, stopping when the water laps over their feet.

"We're going to wade in, to start," he explains. "I don't expect you to learn every part of it all at once, so we can begin with the basics today and see how it goes."

This, like archery lessons, promises to be part one of many sessions. Ellis can hope it's marginally more pleasant for her than time spent in the training yard. The water is lukewarm, and mostly clear. Without having taken any steps forward, the silt beneath the surface is undisturbed. It's easy to see the rippled sand, the scattering of green-coated stones further in. Ellis gives her hand a little, prompting tug, expression expectant.

"And I told you, I am an expert wader. In skirts, even. Really, I hardly see why trousers were even necessary. Not that I don't appreciate the thought, Mister Ellis. It is very charming of you to have considered every detail."

This as she hesitates at the very edge of the pond. With a sidelong look shot in his direction, she edges into the water. The silt gives gently underfoot, and green things clinging to small stones shiver, and small living things fleet anxiously away from the disruption—

"Go on then. You might as well explain them. The basics, I mean."

Edited 2021-04-24 14:44 (UTC)

"It's easier to demonstrate," Ellis tells her, with a little squeeze of the hand to prompt her to keep moving. "But we'll walk until the water comes to here."

A hand lifts, taps his own throat.

"I promise you, this is all easier done in trousers."

Having some understanding of all the fabric and layers involved in her usual styling, Ellis is certain the weight of it would have made bouncy a real challenge. And he'd like to make this easy for her. Unlike the archery, this isn't a skill he expects her to need at any immediate point in time. It can just be this, the two of them in a pond alone on a warm day, without anything else to it.

"Easier to demonstrate," she echoes back, only a little skeptical. "There is nothing at all in the world which can't be written down or spoken of in some fashion, Mister Ellis. In fact, I would be unsurprised to find there are books on this very subject written, no doubt, by some eccentric man at leisure or some such person."

But this is an altogether petty complaint, and she doesn't mind complying with his requests. Indeed the day is warm enough that the barely cool water is something of a relief, and she had been so enthusiastic about the prospect all those many weeks ago, and the trousers are not so completely terrible (only mostly). So she continues to allow herself to be coaxed deeper into the pond.

It is only once the level of the water has passed above her navel that she begins to drift a little nearer to him, her other hand absently seeking out his forearm as a secondary handhold. The footing underneath is softer here, more likely to give way to the shape of their combined weight, and it is one thing to wade about in water which reaches only above the knees and quite another to be more in than out of it.

"Did you go swimming at the Ambassador's party? You remember. That day you were so kind enough to walk me home after."

Walk being loosely applied here.

A twitch of a smile in response. His arm flexes slightly under her hand, fingers squeezing hers, as he recalls the night in question. His memory snags less on the walk itself, Wysteria's arms around his neck and her weight settled against his back, than it does on the quiet moment in the garden after.

"No, I didn't," he answers her, adjusting their trajectory as his toes come up against a the spindly branches of a fallen tree limb. "There was plenty else to keep my attention that day."

And he didn't care so much for an audience, marking the ink on his skin and the scars winding their way down his side. Living alongside Riftwatch for so long still hasn't dispelled the need to pick and choose who's allowed the space to pry.

Wysteria is shorter than him, and Ellis is mindful of it. Unprompted, he halts the forward movement, stood neck-deep in water. He doesn't free his hand or arm from her grasp, merely shifts to stand face to face as he tells her, "This is the first thing I learned to do, float in a place where I could put my feet down if I felt afraid or that I was drifting away."

It's hard to tell whether this will be difficult for her or not. Wysteria tends to surprise him.

"Lean back, and try to relax. I won't let go of you."

Relax is a very fine suggestion in theory and a very difficult sort of instruction to follow in practice. There is something secretly alarmed at this, living in the back of her head and behind her ear, whispering things she can't quite make out but must be the repeated mantra which all children who grew up near a river know. Mind the bank. Mind the current. Mind not to go anywhere you cannot see the bottom of. Did you hear about that little boy who drowned in the summer when the weather was so lovely?

(No one ever knows who it was. That isn't the point of those stories.)

How pleasant swimming seems while on solid ground.

"If I lean back, what is to stop my head from going under water?" She already feels the urge to rise up on her toes to get more clearance from the water, using her grip on him to balance herself a little.

"Me," Ellis tells her, very serious before shaking his head, continuing towards a more sound explanation.

"I don't know all the science behind it," he admits, which seems like an oversight now. Maybe he should have tried to gather a few pieces of scientifically-grounded information before bringing her here. "But I know that you'll float, and it'll be easier in the trousers than it might have been otherwise."

Under the water, his free hand finds her elbow. His fingers slip beneath the cuff of the tunic to her skin, thumb running back and forth there as he grasps for a better explanation than That's how it works.

"Do you want to watch me try it first?" is a little like a compromise, a demonstration to make up for the lack of concrete answer.

"No," is her brisk, immediate answer. It's softened a moment later, more measured by half: "No, it's all right. I'm sure I am quite capable thank you."

With his hands still firmly holding on to him, she squeezes her eyes shut (an unnecessary step) and allows herself to lean slowly backward. There is some urge to tip her chin up as high as it will go, bare feet hesitant to leave the muddy pond bed, and the moment her feet leave it she balks a little at the untethered quality of it.

From the point of view of a third party, she must look rather silly: scrunched face, grasping hands, the uneasy bobbing between some awkward jut of her chin and the tentative uneasy stir of her legs as if she might slowly walk her way toward being more parallel to the surface of the water—

Edited 2021-04-26 19:33 (UTC)

The benefit of holding so tightly to Ellis is that the slight movement of her legs doesn't propel her anywhere.

"I had a cousin who would splash water over my face every time I tried to float this way," Ellis tells her. It's maybe not such a relevant thing to know in the course of instruction. What it might be good for is easing the panicky tension of her body, and drawing her mind away from the strangeness of something unfamiliar. It's why he continues, a little coaxing: "The same one who took care to remind me there might be monsters in the dark."

Floating isn't any kind of work, not really, but Ellis had suspected it would be a challenge for her, and the expression on his face indicates that instinct might have been correct. Her hands are very tight on him. He folds his free hand over hers where they grasp at his arm, remains a tether as he reminds, "You can put your feet down whenever you care to."

"Ah the return of—" She lifts her face up by a degree or two, for talking feels like it has somehow unbalanced her. "—your terrible cousin. I do not want to put my feet down. If I put my feet down—" She blindly kicks a little in a stubborn attempt to right the trajectory of her limbs. "—I will not be swimming and that isn't the point."

Anyway, she is at least as this point confident that she will not suddenly fall back into the water where she will illogically drown. His arm and hands are steady enough, and yes. Technically she can put her feet down whenever she likes. So it is hardly as if going under would even be the end of the world.

Probably.

"Is it possible all people don't float? Maybe there are exceptions."

Or she's wiggling slightly too much. Who can say.

"We'll have to look into it when we get back," Ellis proposes. Science, how does that work? "But you're managing. Try to arch your back a little, if you can."

Advice skirting the edges of propriety, maybe. The trousers alone might have bent the limitations of her patience.

"I think you're a natural. You're taking to the water much faster than the archery."

Ha, ha.

Under the water, one of her feet must find the floor of the pond for she manages to open one eye and shoot him a sidelong look without too much difficulty.

"I'm much improved at archery," she snits back at him, closes both eyes again. "Don't laugh at me."

It's a warning, not reprimand. If she arches her back—

"Oh," is her bland assessment in the seconds following. That does seem to have done something.

No, Ellis doesn't laugh. His grin is there and gone, receding to a twitch of humor at the corner of his mouth as he looks at her.

"Of course," he agrees, because yes, there's been some kind of improvement. Or her luck has held. Either way, she's yet to put an arrow into any innocents and has provided strategic distraction, so—

"Did no one think to teach you this?"

Even with the stories Wysteria's imparted, it's still jarring to think about any place where Wysteria was doing anything other than tearing towards whatever goal she set her eyes on. Arming her properly to do just that feels like the kind of thing that should have always been vital.

"No. There is little reason for a young lady to swim in Kalvad," is her initial, simple reply. Still clutching at him, under the water she is making some small minor adjustments. Letting the line of her back relax and then tightening it over again when she begins to sink.

"If anyone would have taught me, I think it might have been my grandfather but he died when I was still very small. And anyway, my mother certainly doesn't know anything about swimming so maybe he would have treated me differently when I wasn't a child."

"Stretch your arm out," Ellis advises, though she's yet to loosen her hold on him since reclining into the water in the first place. It's a placeholder response, while Ellis considers the information parceled out to him.

It's not such a surprise. He'd pieced together that Wysteria came from some kind of—

Nobility? Not exactly right. Well off, enough so that she was sheltered up until she wasn't.

"You won't have much reason to swim here either," Ellis admits, knowing that she'll keep busy in the Research office and apart from the Ambassador having a second beach party this year, she need not do this again unless it's for Ellis' own sake. "Maybe I should have taught you how to throw axes instead."

Luckily Ellis has some sense of concern for their fellow agents, enough that he wouldn't subject them to the lottery of Wysteria's aim.

"I suppose it is possible the ferry might sink," is a fine placeholder all on its own as she decides which arm he means. She cannot possibly disengage both her hands from him. She is still fumbling a little--kicking her feet here and there, an ungainly conglomeration of limbs and not quite certain of the level at which to carry her breastbone or how exactly she ought to arrange every part of herself to keep her feet from the bottom of the pond.

But eventually she does carefully disentangle one hand from where she is clinging to him. It's a touchy, skittish thing, gone and returned again in a few false starts before she tentatively follows direction.

"And I refuse to learn a second weapon when my rifle is so near to finished. You'll see why then."

"Alright," is a rather tepid response, all things considered. Ellis' understanding of what the rifle does is minimal at best, possibly by choice. It sounds like there's less of a margin for friendly fire involved, which is a bridge to cross when they come to it.

And regardless, he's enjoyed the rapid discussion of it across the table between her and Tony.

"How does it feel? Uncomfortable still?"

Which to Ellis' mind is the chief thing to tackle today, and everything else will come in time if he can persuade her into the water a second time.

She is silent for a moment, thoughtfully assessing. After a beat, still wobbling half submerged and half floating with her scrunched up face hovering just above the water's surface—

"I feel like a beetle that's fallen into a cup."

Is that a positive or a negative?

Either way, it draws a bright peal of laughter from Ellis, head momentarily tipping back and arm shifting in her grasp before he recalls his task as tether and stills.

"Alright. Tell me, would you rather learn the back stroke or put your face in the water?"

The former is hardly going to dispel the beetle-like nature of the position, but the latter is almost certain to be met with some complaint. Ellis has drawn her in slightly, closer to him from where she'd drifted, propelled by the fidgety movement of her limbs.

Given the givens, and how she'd threatened him should he do it, that bright laugh should irritate terribly. Instead it warms something at the very center of her chest, a burgeoning pleasantness alike to the sun on her face.

Her feet must find the ground for she's a little steadier when next she opens her eyes to look at him. With some legitimate confusion—

"What's meant to be so difficult about putting my face in the water?"

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