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

Maybe that's true. Maybe she will be good at it. After all, it can't be so hard. Lots and lots of people in the world swim. Nevermind that she suspects swimming to be very much like dancing, where one must be enthusiastic about the whole arrangement or risk looking a little silly. For it is very easy, she has always thought, to be a perfectly fine dancer so long as you are enjoying yourself. And how much difference is there, really, between a fine dancer and a truly good one? Certainly not so broad of one that it will ever matter at all to her.

So were she very determined, now would be the time to nod curtly, announce 'Right then' and go about the thing. No time like the present, and so on. Particularly not when she has already stubbornly decided to no longer be something so silly as frightened.

Instead, chin hovering just above the surface of the water, she finds herself absently reaching for him. It's a very small thing, and perhaps easily interpreted as reattaching herself to him like how she'd begun. But mostly, her fingers just skirt tentatively as if absent minded against the flimsy water-floated front of his tunic. Not quite touching and not quite not touching.

"How much practice would you say? Out of curiosity. Before you felt certain of it."

The almost-clutch of her fingers is becoming familiar. Ellis is reminded of her fingertips hovering over the scar at his shoulder, the prickling delicacy of the contact. He inhales deeply, more for the suggestion of her fingers than for the question itself.

"I don't remember, exactly," he admits. "It took some time, I think. It didn't come to me right away."

It's natural, in some way, for childhood memories to blur together. But that is all another lifetime. Reaching back for it is like straining for a vanishing dream.

A shrug, water rippling out from him at the small movement. It's not enough to disturb the drifting fabric of his tunic in her grasp.

"And do you think—" She pauses to reorder the question. The water makes the sturdy fabric all light and worn soft between her fingers—falsely delicate. It occurs to her that none of her current things are so different from it.

She looks down from his face, studying the ripple of the water shifting between them.

"If you'd never learned, is there a time it would have ever made a difference?"

The press of his thumb is set just beneath the jut of her rib. It's very different to put his hand along her waist with nothing but a tunic between her skin and his palm. The sturdy, tightly-sewn fabric of her corset had been a kind of unyielding.

"Wardens don't have much cause to swim," he says first, slowly. Had she taken a different tone, he might have thought she was stalling. But by now, he knows what it looks like when Wysteria is wheedling her way out of something. "I fell into a river once, before. I like to think knowing how to swim made it easier to find my way out."

That knowledge, and a well-placed log. But—

"Are you trying to decide if it's worth learning?"

"No, no," is a hurried thing. Dismissive like a wave of the hand. She looks back up at him. "No it seems very productive. As we discussed—the ferry might sink."

It's very briskly stated and by all appearances quite sincere. He offered, she agreed, she has decided she wished to learn and enjoys the prospect of knowing a thing. That makes it worthwhile all on its own, doesn't it? So no, it isn't stalling. Nor a shift in her intentions to learn. It is—

"Have you ever instructed anyone before?" She asks, plucking thoughtlessly at the floating shape of his shirt. "At swimming."

—a point of diverging interest, lets say.

"No, not at swimming. It's not the first of my talents people ask after when they want me to give instruction."

Not that Ellis had advertised. There's a wealth of better options, people who spent their lives on the water before coming to Riftwatch. The middling skill of a Fereldan Warden isn't going to top any list of swimmers Riftwatch's Division Heads might seek to assemble.

It's a dangerous thing to assume Wysteria is winding her way towards a particular point. Ellis has spent many afternoons, evenings and plodding lengths of travel listening to Wysteria and Tony's conversation unspool past him in far-reaching directions. But it's not a hardship to be asked and to give an answer to her. They have yet to stray towards the kinds of questions that strike defensive tension in response quicker than they do an answer.

"You're the one who'd be able to tell if I'm more or less adept in a pond than I am in the training yard."

"I suppose we are rather full up on various sailors and pirates and that sort of thing so if someone wished to learn, they might go rattling about in that general direction first."

She can hear herself talking, the spin of some idle thought being allowed to play out without much conscious effort as she fiddles uselessly with the fabric of his shirt front. Talking to fill some space she hasn't identified the dimensions of—

"I suspect you're the person people look for when they wish to know something about darkspawn or clobbering demons with a mace or whatever else Wardens are known for these days. And probably dogs, as everyone secretly takes that joke about Ferelden so seriously. And I am not stalling," she adds briskly, recalling what he'd called to her when she'd been rattling about in that bush. She shoots him a sidelong look, and then lets her eye line skirt away past his shoulder to the very blue sky or the bullrushes on the other side of the pond.

"I only wanted to say that it's very thoughtful of you to be so willing to do it."

No that's not it.

"And that I think being chin deep in pond water suits you unexpectedly well." There it is, all ridiculous and so silly that she is compelled, no forced to continue: "And now I'm afraid you must let me drown, so we will never have to suffer through another attempt of me saying another complimentary about your face ever again."

It's not the end point Ellis had envisioned.

But it does draw out a small smile, some minor flush and prickle of self-consciousness gathering at the nape of his neck. There's no real reason to be caught off guard by her admiration, but it's still unexpected.

He thinks to say something, offer some minor deflection in response to her. But his hands lift to cup her cheeks, fingers finding the line of her jaw. Her hair is coming up in loose, damp tendrils around her face.

You really are meant to ask, she'd scolded once, and Ellis does think of it in the breath of time in which he sways in towards her and the moment his mouth finds hers.

Wysteria tastes of the pond. Ellis has a split second to register it before he remembers his intentions: it's a relatively chaste kiss. He straightens from it with an abashed little smile, nothing to say for himself, or for the quality of Wysteria's compliments, or their progress on her swimming lessons.

He is meant to ask her, but there is something in the willing tilt of her face between his hands which suggests that in this very specific circumstance (maybe there are others; she hasn't yet decided) that the transgression has already been forgiven.

Although afterward, with her fingers having closed in the fabric of his wet tunic, she makes a little grumbling noise of protest. "You're not meant to reward me for being so dreadfully inarticulate, you know. It will make for a terrible habit. The next time I think you look well, I will lose even more syllables at a time until eventually I am only paying you compliments in assertive nods. You ought to know that is no way to teach anything, Mister Ellis."

And--

"Also I lied. I was stalling."

The admission makes him laugh, low and fond. Ellis kisses her in response. It's a brief, chaste kiss, there and gone in the space of a breath.

Ellis has found it's easier to kiss her that way now. The impulse at first had been to linger, but almost without realizing he's gotten used to the idea that there will be other moments to kiss her again. Everything feels more secure, the affection between them setting down enough roots. He doesn't need to brace for a moment when it vanishes.

"Try for me once," he coaxes. "Then we can see about food, if you're hungry."

Her tsk is sharp, punctuated by a faux-aggrieved look and a tug to his shirt front.

"Very well. Though I hardly see why I should when I could simply stand here and say terrible things to make you kiss me."

With a great roll of her eyes, she looses her hold on him and shuffles her preparatory steps backwards. Fine. And so she will flop around in the water for a few minutes more, all half-floating and the awkward working of limbs, with more splashing that is really necessary for the very small progress she makes in any particular direction.

What she does manage to do, no doubt under Ellis' careful supervision, is ungainly splash her way to some point where when she goes to put her feet down to steady herself—"There, you see. I've done it"—Wysteria finds herself straining to do so. At the very limit of her height to keep her tipped up face above the water, she squawks in dismay and feels out blindly after him .

As expected, Ellis is within arm's reach.

The first swipes of her arm land in the wrong direction, but Ellis catches her hand on the second.

"Here. Kick your feet," he instructs, stepping towards Wysteria rather than reeling her in towards him. "I have you."

Trading the hold on her hand for light, steadying pressure at her hips. He's near enough that Wysteria could easily use him for leverage, if treading water doesn't take.

She's going to kick him, is not what she says, thought it occurs to her while doing what he instructed that it would be easy to kick to wide and wallop him in the shin or thigh. He is close enough for it.

—But it's a distant thought, there and gone again, swallowed down under the effort of keeping her face out of the water while complaining in fits and starts that, "I didn't agree to not touching the bottom, Ellis. This is viciously unfair. I will report you to the Commander for abusing your post."

She makes a stubborn effort, bobbing up and down like a cork for maybe a minute. Then at last Wysteria uses her grip on his arm to dredge herself in close, clinging onto his shoulder like a particularly motivated leech.

"You see, I've mastered it. Well done."

"Aye, well done," is said sincerely enough, all pleased warmth in his voice as he takes a step back. Cinching an arm around her and hooking a hand at the bend of her knee, he can more or less take her weight without much trouble. Combined with the minor retreat, Wysteria's face is well out of danger from the water.

Calling it mastered might be a bit generous, but Ellis isn't inclined to press the point. They can consider a second trip once they've returned to Kirkwall and Wysteria has fully dried herself off and the various objections have had time to fade a little.

"You are a natural," is what he asserts instead. "If the ferry goes down, you'll have no trouble at all."

"There is a current in the harbor. And I will be wearing skirts then," are two wholly unnecessary points of contention made as one of her arms slithers a little higher, securing itself around the back of his neck.

"But it's too late now. You've promised me dry land already."

"Aye, I have."

Dry land, and food, and a sample of pond water, is the apparent sum of what's due to her.

In only a few steps, he could put Wysteria down and she'd be able to stand. Instead, he adjusts his grip to hold her more securely, hitching her weight up with a small grin.

"Give me a kiss, for the toll."

A marked rise in price, considering he'd once toted Wysteria all the way to her Hightown house once without anything more than her gratitude at the end of the journey.

"This is the very definition of extortion, Mister Ellis."

Though there is a spark of good cheer in the sound of her protest and she capitulates readily enough. It takes only a little reaching to do so from where he has her cinched in close to him—a damp hand touching his cheek, a brisk kiss planted on his mouth that is by definition so wet that it makes her laugh after.

"Now on with you, or I will begin to suspect your motivations."

She shifts in his hold for emphasis, a leg stirring the water as her hand falls from his cheek and settles at Ellis' shoulder. The sun is warm where it touches wet skin and at the crown of her head.

There is some temptation to stand here with Wysteria until his arms give out. But having been paid his toll, Ellis does as bidden. It's a short walk to the shallows anyway, at which point he levers Wysteria down to wade the last few steps to shore herself.

The trousers are a novelty. Ellis considers he's never seen her without her skirts, put together to some degree. (Even in the miserable damp of that shared dream, she'd been more or less properly dressed, if sodden and mud-spattered.) He almost thinks to say a second time the she is pretty, but instead—

"What am I going to have to trade you to get you in the water again?"

Maybe not today, but surely there's something he can leverage to arrange a second attempt.

The weight of her sodden clothes is nominal compared to that of her own shape peeled out from the water. Dredging up out of the shallows is a more clumsy thing than she'd have anticipated, to say nothing of the sort of silly twinge of regret which comes with being set down. And it's complicated by the urge to wring out her sleeves and to peel various bits of fabric away from where it might otherwise cling a little too close, thank you.

"Well now that you say so, I have need of a selection of rats."

Is probably not where he was expecting this to go, but she seems quiet genuine as she untucks the tunic and wrings water from its hem.

"Miss Smythe and I have synthesized a toxin from the Bierstagg fungi and I should like to study its effects before we issue it for use in the field."

No, not the kind of demand he'd expected, but it's not so far afield that he can't take the request in stride.

"Rats," Ellis echoes. "Aye, that's not so impossible."

Difficult, maybe.

His eyes catch at her exposed throat, the line of scar peeking from the slight gap in tunic laces, before he drops his gaze. Of all the things about her could that stick in his mind, his thoughts linger on the unexpected calluses of her hands, or the line of her collarbone and the scar she'd despaired over.

Turning slightly, he reaches up to scrape his fingers back through his hair, then shake the last of the water from his curls in a quick, sharp movement.

"Come on. We can eat something while we dry off."

If, while shaking the excess water from her tunic, she happens to glance in Ellis' direction and happens to observe him shaking the water from his hair and happens to observe the close fall of his wet clothes and happens to think to herself that, really, swimming is not so terrible as all that and there is hardly any need for bribery--

Well. That is all either entirely a matter of coincidence or simply her being reasonable about the learning of a new skill, and so certainly deserves no remark or even really any conscious observation whatsoever.

Smoothing the long hem of the untucked tunic down, Wysteria bends to fetch up her boots from where they were discarded on the pond's bank, saying, "I observed a patch of clover just over there which seems unlikely to stick to us. Fetch your picnic while I see that its free of spiders."

Wysteria Poppell, a little frightened of being more than knee deep in water and great defender against arachnids.

All spiders cower before her, Ellis has no doubt.

"All clear?" he asks on the way back to her, saddlebag in hand.

The sight of her at some distance, tunic and trousers and her damp hair curling up around her face, is so charming that Ellis' immediate instinct is to reach for her. When he tumbles down onto the clover, heedless of potential spider presence, it puts him comfortably close to her in a sort of compromise that staves off the more pressing need to occupy himself with taking her hand.

"It is—" becomes a laugh as he throws himself down beside her. "Yes. Quite safe."

Seated with her legs tucked demurely up alongside her, as if dressed in skirts still, she leans across him to rummage through the saddlebags—withdrawing the various accoutrements of the packed lunch and cheerfully balancing each secured packet one after another somewhere on Ellis's partially reclined torso.

Obligingly, Ellis sinks from partially reclined to fully reclined to play the part of table. One hand finds her knee and settles there, face tipped to watch her.

"There's a bottle of wine at the very bottom," he tells her. "I think it's one I remembered you liking."

Ages ago, that party where they'd hidden in a closet together and abandoned Fitz to do the talking, Ellis remembers some offhand comment Wysteria had made about the vintage served along with dinner. Considering how little had been praiseworthy about that evening, that had stuck.

But otherwise, it's largely bread and cheese and meat, accompanied by little jars of berries and jam and fruit. Plain, but meant to be filling, and to keep on a day's journey in and out of Kirkwall.

"So there is," is a precursor to a much more approving noise once the bottle has been drawn free and she has had a chance to examine it. Glancing down past it— "I doubt whether this one will balance very well on you however, so I may as well keep it for myself."

And so the bottle is thoughtfully tucked securely into the crook of her bent knees before Wysteria closes the saddlebag and fishes it in the general direction of his head.

"Here. You may use this as your pillow."

She has serious work consisting of opening jars and arranging everything about his person to do.

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