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

"Now there is a thought," she says, sounding for a moment as she it is indeed an entirely new idea to her. Only Wysteria laughs as she straightens away from her boots to give him the room to work, so she can't possibly be serious. Twitching the edge of her tartan skirts back out of his way is mostly unnecessary, but she does it anyway without thinking.

"We might try that once we understand a little more of how it should be done. But it seems inconsiderate to do before that point."

He is bent down wrestling with her boot laces. How far does she get unbuttoning the great slew of buttons along the ribs of her dress's bodice before he realizes what task her hands are occupied with?

It becomes difficult to decide whether Wysteria would have arrived at the thought on her own, or if Ellis has nudged her towards something that will sooner or later generate a fair amount of stress for him.

However, in this moment there's enough distance between now and then for Ellis to chuckle at her assessment.

In the course of encouraging one foot up, then the other, so he might work off both boots and set them aside, Ellis does become aware of the working of Wysteria's own hands. Of course she's found something to do with them. In all the time he's known her, Wysteria has proven herself incapable of remaining idle for very long.

Kneeling still, fingers circling one ankle beneath her hem as he looks up at her, Ellis entreats, "I meant to attend your buttons, Missus Ginsberg."

What a lovely thing it had been, to hear Wysteria introduce herself with his name. And strange, to find this balance between something long buried and fractured apart, and the unexpected pleasure of hearing her say the name.

The use of that name—it clearly pleases her, both here in this room and to have claimed it as hers downstairs. It's different when he says it rather than her simply using it, of course. It broadens her already wide smile by a further degree. It almost makes her laugh, that warm cheerful shape which blooms behind her ribs in reply to that name from him. After all the work she'd done to lever it out of him—

Her hands have stopped, but haven't fallen away.

She is all good cheer when she says, "I could do them back up again if you wished me to."

"Leave them," Ellis replies, ceding his grip on her ankle as he rises. "I'll finish."

The shift in their circumstance doesn't always feel real. In between the moments when he calls her wife, or her ring is made visible, they might be continuing along as they had been: trading these small touches behind closed doors, out of sight.

He ducks his head to kiss her, briefly and softly. Hands set on her hips, squeezing lightly before he circles around to attend the string of buttons. Turning her towards the fire as he does, betraying the line of thought that leads to—

"Are you still cold?"

"I'm not the one with a fistful of snow down the neck of their shirt."

It's equal parts cheerful and sly, quite pleased with herself even as Wysteria allows herself to be steered closer to the hearth and the fire crackling along in it. She folds her hands obediently at her center, one over the other and, after a sparse moment where it seems she might insist on playing coy, she folds smoothly back into that pattering rhythm of chatter as he sees to her buttons—

"No, I'm not cold. That mulled wine did fine work, as so did all your attention. I hope Serah Tomar will bring us snowshoes tomorrow. I have a great fascination with them, but have never gone. I can't imagine traipsing about with great things on our feel will help in defending against wolves, of course, but otherwise— I imagine I will be much better at it than skating. After all, it's only walking."

She half turns.

"Are you still cold?"

"No."

Is mostly true.

"It's melted now."

Is it an improvement to have a great damp patch spread across his back instead of a slurry of snow caught there? Hard to say.

Ellis bends, kisses the nape of her neck before assuring, "I'll leave everything to dry. It won't keep us from our expedition in the morning."

Whether or not Ellis is cold, his mouth is still warm enough where it finds her skin. It's his fingers that run cooler in the moment, though how much bother can they be through Wysteria's underthings?

Not very. Not this close to the hearth and with the prickle of his beard scuffing against the back her neck. She squirms at the scrape of it, laughing, and reaches back to bat in the general direction of a wrist or elbow.

"I imagine if your things are still damp come morning that the lady of the house would be pleased to press them dry for you. We are seeing to their wolf problem, after all."

The brush of his mouth is only briefly interrupted by the swatting of her hand. Undeterred, Ellis sets a last kiss behind her ear, before returning momentarily to the task at hand.

"Don't count it solved just yet."

Has anything they've attempted gone as planned? Ellis doesn't need to recount all the ways in which even the most dull assignments have turned into some shade of disaster in the course of attempting to solve them.

The buttons come loose. Ellis has grown practiced.

"If I hadn't left the book back at the lodge I'd say we write back to Tony before we go."

Just in case.

"I've my crystal with me," she assures him, because of course she does. "We can contact him on the trek up with Serah Tomar in the morning. If you like, you may even write an impromptu report for the Commander when we get back. It will all be highly official, and we'll make ourselves appear to be highly industrious members of the company. Or incredibly foolish ones, if something does go poorly. Which it will not. They're only wolves, and we are both armed."

She raises her left hand with the anchor in it for emphasis. Then, seeing as it's up already, she makes to extract the arm attached to the aforementioned hand from the arm of her dress.

She has had practice too, and the prospect of a carcass to dissect has clearly distracted her sufficiently to make her immune to such things as embarrassment or bashfulness.

(And why should they find her even if there were no promising diversion of work?)

"Have you ever killed a wolf before? Fade touched or otherwise, I suppose. What is the Fereldan opinion on them, being as they're rather dog shaped in general?"

"Aye, I've killed a wolf before," is the first answer given, on the way to the application of his mouth to newly revealed shoulder.

It's a light kiss. Ellis' mouth doesn't remain there, even as his hands make their way down the last quarter of the buttons at the back of her dress. The temptation to lean into her as he speaks is clear, telegraphed even in that brief drop of a kiss and stymied in favor of completing the work at hand.

"There are some who believe we are descended from them," is as slow and methodical in delivery as the work of his hands. "That the man who united the tribes and settled the land was son of a werewolf, and the wolf remained in the blood. Anyone claiming to be a descendent of his might say they've wolf in them, and call them kin."

There's a passage in that book he'd given her, years ago now. Ellis thinks he'd have done better to mark it for her and pass it along with a note than give her this answer himself.

"But even so, you don't let your kin eat up your livestock."

And so the matter is reconciled, more or less.

"You must tell that to my cousins. They have a powerful skill for eating their way through a prodigious number of whatever beasts can be found to sacrifice to them at any time they might choose to visit."

It's a good joke despite the impracticalities of the semantics such as the fact that Ellis is highly unlikely to ever be in the position to tell her cousins much of anything, much less to criticize their ravenous appetites. She is pleased enough with herself over it so as to be all smiles and high humor as she makes to peel her second arm free from its sleeve also.

"We have no such thing as werewolves in Kalvad, if indeed they can even be said to truly exist here. But we are meant to have the fae. They supposedly were creatures derived of the old untamed magics."

Liberated from the majority of her bodice, empty sleeves hanging comically about her waist, Wysteria turns round to him. The lacings of his tunic are familiar ones. She raises her hands to begin picking the tie open.

"It used to be that magicians—mages, rather—, the very powerful ones, were said to be distantly related to them. I can think of no good equivalent for them here in Thedas, save perhaps for spirits. They both traverse a place meant to be in a kind of parallel to the world which is seen every day. Although they, the fae, are of course only children's stories, whereas spirits clearly are quite real."

By now, it is hardly worth saying that Wysteria has adopted such a winning strategy in her approach to most every aspect of this thing they have built up between them. The unceasing flow of conversation checks Ellis' natural inclination to pose some minor objection or prevarication at this realignment of their roles.

Yes, they are married. Yes, the pretenses Ellis has shored up between them have dwindled. Still, a flicker of movement in his body before his hands settle back about her waist.

"They might be real," might be provocation, but comes as true suggestion.

All Ellis' heritage comes couched in legend and myth. Is it so far-fetched to consider that something may be more than has been presented?

"Take this off before you start worrying about my tunic," Ellis says, hands twitching the fabric of her skirt as he offers this quieter aside. Not meant to interrupt, but to avoid any lamentations about wrinkles in the morning.

The sound she makes in reply to this request is a disparaging little click of the tongue and a slightly sullen huff. Nonetheless, Wysteria's relocate from his laces to the flapping sleeves and the mass of fabric about her waist. Very well, isn't said out loud, but is intensely implied.

"If they were real, then they aren't any longer. In which case, I suppose we might describe them rather more like some combination between spirits and ancient elves—certain guardians of Mythal or what have you excepting. Surely no one has actually seen a fae creature in living memory, for there is no academic study of them save to examine them as fables. No, more likely they are an old allegory for practices among the martyrs which no one understood at the time. —The martyrs being one of the old allies that took and remade Kalvad."

She has worked the dress with it's plethora of woolen skirts down over her hips, and has stepped directly out of it. The resultant heap is fetched up, and cheerfully shaken into something like order by way of its shoulders. There are enough fastenings remaining between bodice and skirts that the thing holds together more or less in a single piece. This she passes unceremoniously into Ellis's care she she may untie the second set laces at her waist belonging to her proliferation linen underskirts. This is layering weather.

"Though I suppose you will have to take my word for it."

(He isn't the only one she has successfully distracted with her unrelenting chatter. It is much easier to be very direct and no-nonsense about the whole arrangement when she is talking along at a clip.)

Charged with all this wool, Ellis draws back a step so he might shake the fabric out. Break from her once he's been offered the second set of skirts so both might be set over the rack in front of the fire to dry out completely before the morning. Arrange each piece carefully, so all hangs evenly over the metal.

"Maybe you could tell me one of them," Ellis tells her as he turns back, reaches out to Wysteria for her hands again. "One of the fables, if you remember any."

Though that's hardly their custom.

But they'll never have a book of Kalvad's mythology to pass between them. Not unless it drops from a rift and survives the ensuing scuffle and closing.

"Oh, no. I'm not a very accomplished storyteller, Ellis. I always turn the order of introducing points around, and find myself at the end of the thing having forgotten entirely about some detail I should have introduced earlier. I know a fair few, but guarantee that I would butcher them were I to try to recite them. But if you like, I might try to write one or two down. I might have a better time of it if it were put on paper. One can always revise that sort of thing, whereas I have learned it's very difficult to just take back words."

Somewhere in this long recitation, she has returned her hands to him in accordance with the invitation made by his own. Standing there in her long sleeved chemise and short stays, flat footed in her wooly stockings, she is extraordinarily unembarrassed—rosy cheeked and in broadly high spirits, the tempo of her conversation galloping gaily along to the crack-pop of the fire in the hearth. One of her hands turns; she pinches Ellis gently on the skin stretched between thumb and forefinger.

"Besides, I have heard that we have quite the early morning ahead of us."

"I like the way you tell stories," is surely unsurprisingly; this is common knowledge, or so easily guessed that it might as well be. But it's only a quiet thing, not meant for argument and only a stop on the way to: "If you write it down I'd like it if you read it aloud to me."

Though that is not a task for tonight. She's right. They will have to rise early to strap on snowshoes and tend to the needs of this village. There is a lovely warm bed for them, piled high with blankets and furs. It is late, and they might make their way into it.

Ellis observes there hands, the little pinch of her fingers as it prompts him.

"But we can go to bed," he acquiesces. Hint taken. "I assume we've a long walk and then hard work waiting for us at the end of it."

Wysteria, despite her reputation (unfounded, surely) of having a great capacity for obstinacy, can in fact occasionally be swayed from her target. It ordinarily requires certain prerequisites: uncertainty in her goal, maybe, or spirits high enough to survive some denting, or a great deal of flattery. It helps, of course, when this latter one comes from someone she should like to praise her.

Ellis rarely allows her the pleasure of squabbling so she can be correct, but sometimes this is a little like that—a cheery cycle of protesting some point or another, then folding with much false put upon exasperation usually only after he's relented a little to begin with. Here, the familiar game plays out with a dramatic tsk from Wysteria, and a lively slapping away of Ellis's hands as if to say, Oh, very well you. But only because you've asked so nicely—

She can do two things at once.

"Once a long time ago there were three siblings," she says, primly reaching once more for the lacings of Ellis's tunic. She is very delicate with undoing the cording, fussing with the tie. "Barclay, who was strong and handsome and loved his father, and Irmine who was clever and graceful and loved books, and Adda who was sly and knew all there was to of the land where they all were born.

"—They are all, naturally, representative of various bits of Kalvadan history," she adds. "This particular story is all meant to be about how the original throne was split."

Thus chastened and indulged in equal parts, Ellis' hands drift back down to set loosely at her waist while she plucks at the laces. The fabric is heavy wool, over a second, lighter tunic. His gambeson hangs open, already unbuttoned.

It occurs to him all at once that while he's undone all her laces and buttons before, he has more often managed his own laces and layers at her direction than given over the task to her initiative.

Drawing his thumbs over the light fabric at her stomach, watching her face as she works, relating the beginnings of her chosen story.

"Did they decide among themselves to divide it?" he asks. "Or were they charged with caring for the land together?"

If this is a story describing the splitting of a kingdom, then he could only reason that it followed that there would be a division at one point or another.

No, she has never undressed him save for that one dreadful night spent hunkered in that spare outbuilding, stripping him free of his battered armor with the intent to see to his abused body excavated out from under dented plate. But in this little room with the crackling fire and the piled furs, it isn't difficult to undo the lacing of his heavy wool tunic. Indeed it seems quite natural to pluck free the cording, and to move her hands to the collar of his undone gambeson so she might encourage it from his shoulders.

"Oh no, not at all. Or rather, I suppose it was some combination of the two, as over the course of the nights each sibling was visited by a prophetic dream of sorts. Adda had a vision of a great region being divided, and Irmine the tongues of many people being distilled to into one shape, and Barclay had the most terrible vision of all which was his father's body being divided to nourish a dozen hungry mouths. And so and so forth—all highly metaphorical imaginings, I assure you."

Making way for the slide of his gambeson down his arms requires lifting his hands from her waist. Wysteria isn't charged with the minding of it after it clears his shoulder. Ellis hooks the collar with one hand, turning by degrees to pitch the quilted fabric onto the rickety chair alongside the fire.

As attentive as he is to the story she is imparting, he is further focused on Wysteria. So far, there has been no real sign of nerves. Wysteria is still in high spirits, flushed and seemingly content with their present state.

Ellis doesn't reach back for her hands. He reclaims his space before her, instead letting his hands fall to the fastenings of his bracers as he asks, "What became of them when they woke from their metaphorical dreams?"

The gambeson is shed. He moves to address his braces. Wysteria, meanwhile, gamely makes to pluck the hem of his woolen tunic free.

"Each siblings took counsel in their own fashion, of course. Barclay consulted the oracles, and Irmine the old texts, and Adda refered herself to the voices which spake from the wood, until at last all three siblings were resolved on what must be done. And so in the pitch darkness of night, they took to their father's room. There, Irmine distracted him with stories, and handsome and strong Barclay restrained him, and Adda carved him up in accordance to the drawing of borders on her free land, and so on and so forth. And then, I think, in the original there is a bit about the taste of the old king's flesh. I liked it when I was a girl as I was very morbidly minded, you understand. But the general idea of the thing is that all three siblings see the future, and know they must sacrifice their father to achieve it, and his body empowers them to achieve their visions. And that is more or less how the three crowns of Kalvad were formed. Take this off, would you?"

She has raised that wooly hem considerably.

The braces clatter to the floor alongside Ellis' boots, inadvertently underscoring the description of how the old king met his end at the hands of his children.

It's a more brutal beginning than Ellis had imagined.

And on its heels is the prompting request, redirecting his attention momentarily from the surprising turn. So yes, Ellis covers her hands with his own before taking full charge of the thick fabric and drawing it up and over his head. The thinner, tightly-woven cotton beneath clings, rumpled but still half-caught in his waistband.

The woolen tunic joins the gambeson.

"It's a heavy sacrifice. And well-told."

And before he is tempted to dwell on this story she has presented to him, let it mire him in memories, he presses, "Does Kalvad still have three kings, or three queens?"

"Just so," she confirms. No, it isn't particularly well told. She has rushed past all the best parts. But if he thinks so, then who is she to argue the point? Let him believe she is some expert storyteller, she thinks, her fingers itching after this lighter, more perfunctory (in the moment) layer he has on.

"You will be pleased to know that the actual history doesn't involve cannibalism. Uhtric one crowned was the last single monarch of the empire and was unseated in the normal fashion of being allowed against and there being a war. Barclay is meant to be a representative of Uhtric's own people, and Irmine the Kalds which were a sort of northern folk, and Adda the martyrs who were more or less the first magicians. —Mages, rather."

Under this guise of cheerfully prattling on, Wysteria has found her way to this last bit of lacing and picked it open. Now, her hands shift to take the thin tunic by its collar and the lines of her forearms brush and then settle against the plane of his chest.

"It's one of the more direct stories concerning the whole matter. There is also one from the point of view of a fox outwitting various traps, for example. And Adda is one of those common figures of folklore who is in all sorts of stories and tends to be whatever is required of her. Including sometimes being a him instead of a her, although I've personally never cared much for those. May I take this one off myself?"

Standing there before him with her face turned slightly up to account for the difference in their height, it's a very eager sort of question. Quite plain. He keeps taking this part from her, and she wants—

Well. To take his tunic off of him, at least.

As she leans into him by way of her forearms, Ellis' hands have come up to loop lightly, absently, around her waist. Set his palms at the small of her back. It is counterproductive to what he knows is their end goal, but in the moment that point of logic is supplanted by the pleasure of having her so close to him while she recounts this piece of history to him.

But the answer comes easily, without much consideration of logistics—

"Yes."

His hands lift from where they had so recently settled. Guide her with him so he might perch at the edge of the chair that presently holds his discarded items so she might have the advantage in height.

Not such a dramatic advantage as it might have been if he were to lower himself down to his knees on the floorboards, but it'll serve her in the moment.

Had she expected him to refuse her? No, surely not. After all, he so rarely does. Yet having her request so promptly granted sparks something bright in her. She nearly laughs over it as he makes to sit and draws her there after him.

Indeed this posting serves her perfectly well, and she takes to it promptly enough—so pleased to be indulged that she hardly shies over the task of chasing after his tunic's hem.

"Remind me, and tomorrow I'll see if I can recall any of the Brave Ivanhoe adventures. I think you would like those better than any of the founding sagas. They have slightly less obtuse reasonings behind them, I suppose. —Oh," she says. She has drawn his tunic halfway off over his head though pauses suddenly.

"But will you be cold if you're stripped down?" And then, in a rapid and only slightly blistering reversal of this reconsideration— "Well, no. I suppose you can put it back on after if you decide you've a chill."

Hence, she hurriedly peels the light rumpled tunic the rest of the way free of him.

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