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

"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.

Caught briefly within his own tunic, arms raised, Ellis isn't afforded the space to reassure or deny the possibility of catching a chill.

He'd expected the pause to be related more to the reality of what they were doing rather than concern for his well being. But Wysteria tugs the tunic free of him without any further delay, and Ellis follows the motion upwards, back onto his feet.

No, he isn't very worried about being cold.

"Save a Brave Ivanhoe for our hike," Ellis advises. His skin is prickling, aware of the space between them. Their respective levels of undress. "Or our trip back to the lodge, if you don't care to share it with our guides."

In truth, that pause had been just that—a silly, twittering sort of hesitation disguised even to herself. But as he stands again, she recognizes it. Or, at the very least, she becomes very aware of the result of all this effort. He is so very broad and the bursting dark shape of that tattoo lodged at the center of his chest is so very immediate.

She is still holding his tunic. So Wysteria abruptly folds it in half, steps slightly sideways and thrusts it unceremoniously over the chair arm while saying, "I am positive Serah Tomar would prefer not to be regaled by myself, so I think I will save it for later. Besides, it will be good for me to try my hand at talking and skating at the same time."

(Implies she hadn't chattered along the whole way down the river, which is fundamentally untrue.)

He still is very broad and his tattoo very dark when she has finished dealing with the tunic. Her hands though, which have been more or less occupied since they came to the room, are abruptly without employment, and for a moment they hover unconsciously in clear indecision. Then she catches him by both wrists and authoritatively places his hands back at her waist.

"We should decide now if I am seducing you or not tonight."

The brazier has not been banked and shuttered. The fire still crackles merrily in the hearth. There is no real sort of shadow to mask the hard wear written into Ellis’ body. That too is easily seen now, along with the black bloom of ink at his chest. Wysteria is close enough to see it all.

There is some distant worry for what she’ll make of that, slotted in alongside the awareness of her looking at him.

When she grasps his wrist, Ellis is partway to some other observation. Maybe a suggestion as to what chatter Tomar might find palatable or praise of her ability to multitask. It’s all startled out of him when she speaks, so decisive that it rattles a laugh in response even as his palms mold to her hips. The fabric of her underthings is sturdy but thin, so thin by contrast that he can fee the warmth of her skin straight through it.

“I didn’t know I had a say in when you decided to seduce me. It feels like I should be caught off guard by it all.”

A small favor, perhaps, that she’s giving him advance warning instead of simply launching into her campaign.

"Oh," is half fluster and half objection, though her hands both stay put at his wrists, firmly anchored. "Well if you would prefer to be surprised, I can make those arrangements. I only supposed you might have an opinion on the matter."

Stop there, says good sense, yet she continues to qualify: "I realize, Ellis, that you have a habit of being entirely accommodating. But as has been previously noted, we've something of an early morning and all manner of danger and adventure to account for, and that seems to be to require some measure of deliberation."

She is merely being sensible and considerate.

"So say the word and we will go to bed. To sleep, I mean."

"Very sensible."

With his hands so pinned, Ellis' expression of affection manifests in a slow lean forward, catching her mouth in a light kiss. Maintains the slip of space between their bodies as he does so.

This is al indecision. Their trajectory had felt inevitable until this point, and now Ellis is thinking of early mornings and of his own apprehension. Trying to parse how much of his hesitation belongs to the former rather than the latter.

"I think we might go to bed," he says slowly. "And keep your seductions until tomorrow evening. When we can spend all our time on that, without worrying about what waits for us in the morning."

Tomorrow evening they are meant to go scuffing back upriver to the lodge, which she would not describe precisely as gloomy—(and truly what does she care about that? The Gallows is gloomy. The house in Hightown is certainly grim)—, but somehow feels like oddly close quarters despite being considerably larger than this little room or even this little public house. Even so—

Well it is all at once something like a relief. Not to avoid the thing this evening, but to have it marked and placed on a metaphorical calendar. Yes, suits her perfectly well. Look at all these hours she has to organize her thoughts on the matter. A deadline, or a fixed point in time, can be a very fine thing.

"Tomorrow," is prim affirmation and threat both. This is a plan and she clearly means to keep his feet to the fire over it. "If you arrange to be mauled by a wolf, I will be very cross with you."

She squeezes his wrists and squints at him for emphasis. It's only after this warning has been given a moment or two to marinate that she unravels her hands from him, saying, "And Brave Ivanhoe will have to wait of course," as she steps back and moves to see to her stays.

"Is there only one tale of Brave Ivanhoe?"

Is not a promise to avoid being mauled.

Not that Ellis has particular aspirations to be mauled. It is only that he's found it better to avoid making any promises outside his control. There's no need to be held responsible for some future bad luck. Who is to say that wolves will be the entirety of their task tomorrow?

Left to his own devices, Ellis unfastens his own laces. Steps out of his trousers, so he might leave them with his discarded tunics and gambeson.

While Wysteria manages her stays, Ellis crosses to see to the fire and then to the brazier in turn. The bed itself is piled high with blankets and furs. They'll be warm enough tonight.

"No, not at all. There is a great assortment of them. He is rather like—well, I can only think of Monsieur Royan's Black Fox at the moment, although Brave Ivanhoe isn't really much like him at all save for the fact that there are lots of different stories about him and they can all be taken together or apart, and I imagine someone has translated most of the Black Fox's adventures in all sorts of languages. He is one of those repeating characters in folklore for which there is a story you may use for nearly every occasion."

This she chatters out in not quite raid succession, pattering along at a clip one might consider perfectly respectful were it not slowed by her attention wandering after Ellis as he crosses to see to the fire and brazier; she's never seen him in his drawers in anything like real light. To say nothing of the fact that, before he turns the coals over, she can clearly see the scars left behind on his back by that dreadful crush of armor; and the marks of other old hurts with them, a great array of markings like points on a map.

But lest she be caught examining anything above Ellis' waist or below it, she has turned away by the time he's finished with the fire.

"We had a book in the house which collected a great deal of his adventures and was prettily illustrated. They're usually in verse, of course," she says, folding her stays once over and then laying them with the rest of her things. "Which I won't be able to reproduce. I've no head for reciting poetry, as well you know. But I think I remember the general sense of a few of the stories enough to pass them broadly along."

From her satchel, Wysteria wrestles free a length of bright blue calico. She is already moving to the bed as she makes to wrap the cloth about her hair. If her hair isn't coming down, there is no reason not to see its shape more or less preserved for the morning.

Once the brazier has been attended to, the room is plunged into warm darkness.

Ellis has been careful, or attempted to be careful, when it came to putting his scarring on display. How much time had lapsed between Wysteria's removal of his tunic and the moment the light was lowered down to shadow? Enough to take full inventory?

When he thinks back to that little shed, his memories center more on her hands in his hair than any other thing that might have happened.

When he joins her, it's only to settle first at the edge of the bed. Put a hand to her knee as she wraps up her hair.

"I'd like to hear as many as you remember," he tells her. "But not all at once. Only one or two, maybe."

His voice softens, warming as he continues, "We have the time."

They're married. They've been given this time, away from Kirkwall. They can make the most of it.

In that coppery dark, the naked glow of her anchor shard washes the air about it a cool and sickly green. She hardly notices it as she secures the calico and tucks its ends in under the edge. The whole effect is absurdly domestic—more unvarnished and straight forward than even the brisk no-nonsense way she'd asked whether he cared to obligated to submit to her wiles.

"Well," she says. His hand on her knee is warm through the fabric of her chemise, and the piled furs are both prickling and soft. It's an acceptable state of affairs for the evening. Yes, it's true. They do have time.

"I'll see if I can remember one or two or the best ones to start with then and see where the rest fall in to place after."

So highlighted, Ellis is almost of a mind to ask if she cares to send for assistance. They might have someone from Riftwatch within a day by griffinback. They would likely return so quickly after that it would hardly disturb them.

The option is tucked away. After they have assessed the rift, Ellis can decide whether to press the issue.

With Wysteria's hair more or less secure, Ellis tightens his grip on her leg before lifting his hand. Draws back the bedclothes properly, so he might come to lie alongside her.

"Before we consider Brave Ivanhoe, or sleep," he posits, "Would you like to return here tomorrow after we've done our work?"

She is shifting to make room for him there among the blankets and furs, beginning to unfold her legs so she might stretch them out, but this question draws her briefly short. Would she like that? To come back here to this little room over the relatively quiet public house main room, with rooms to either side of this one and a inoffensively bedraggled landlady overseeing the whole of the property? Certainly the room is far smaller than the one they've been permitted at the lodge. With the fire lit and the brazier uncovered, she had been able to see him in so much detail.

(For an instant, she misses that tiny closet of a room in the Markham collegiate dormitories.)

With a sniff, Wysteria kicks her feet in under the blankets and pats the space beside her in an effort to urge him to hurry into bed. She is pulling these covers up shortly, Ellis. Best to see yourself under them immediately lest you be left outside of them— and so on and so forth.

"Let's see how late the hour is after we've finished our work. It's possible we will have no choice at all in the matter and be forced to stay or attempt to skate back upriver in the dark."

Yes, she thinks. She would to come back here.

It's near enough to a decisive answer. Ellis can divine the meaning behind it, and considers that he might leave a little extra coin with the landlady to be sure of their place tomorrow evening.

Yes, he likes this small, cozy room better than the one at the lodge. It has a certain kind of luxury to it, as befits the dwelling of Viscount, but it is borrowed and they are not alone within it.

Slid in beside her, Ellis doesn't bother checking the urge to turn fully in towards her body. Wysteria drags all these heavy blankets and furs up over them, and for his part Ellis slides an arm around her waist. Cinches her in towards him so they might lie flush against each other.

"I wouldn't make you skate in the dark," is low and fond, has the cadence of an endearment despite being so far from romantic anything. "So it's good that we have a bearable alternative for you if we find ourselves in such a scrape."

A scrape is indeed what they find themselves in the following afternoon after a long morning of traipsing into the mountains led by Serah Tomar. Happily for the poor man in question—who is not unkind, merely that gruff sort of backwoodsman who finds being drawn into relentless conversation by young women baffling—, the exertion of snowshoeing puts something of a dampener on the clip of Wysteria's narration. It is one of those activities which loses its whimsy relatively quickly for the unpracticed, particularly when one is obligated to practice it rather than simply indulging in a bit of fun.

What awaits them at the end of this long hike is more or less as expected; a pack of slavering, overlarge fade touched wolves driven near rabid by the touch of the thinning Veil, and a rift punched into the winter thin atmosphere. Tomar judiciously doesn't accompany them that far, but rather sets up on a ridge where he will be untroubled by either wolf or demon. Were he slightly less aged, Wysteria might elect to be put out by the man's good sense of self preservation. Regardless, she leverages this fact and Tomar's lack of conversational defense as ammunition later when they are loading the corpse of a large dead wolf onto a litter of freshly hacked pine branches.

('Serah, I beg you not question Warden Ellis and I's expertise in this matter, given all that we've accomplished this afternoon,' and so on and so forth.)

The sum of these things is trudging back down into the village as the sun sets, sweating despite the cold and stinking of viscera and exertion both.

And how tremendous a success! They will have to borrow a sledge and take an intrepid team of goats back to the lodge come morning in order to see the corpse transplanted back with them, and Wysteria spends a jubilant half hour arguing with a local in order to secure just that. To say nothing of the further hour she spends in the company of the dead creature in the bitter cold of the public house's wood shed, taking extensive notes for the benefit of Mister Dickerson whenever they should eventually make their return to the Gallows.

It's only after darkness has fallen in around the woodshed that she suddenly looks up and pauses writing in her little field book.

And then all at once, Wysteria is on her feet with a cry of "Oh!" And then, more mortified still: "Oh no."

When she bursts into the public house's back room where, in exchange for the use of the shed for storing cursed animal bodies, Ellis has been put to work helping the landlady with the repair of the store room's shelving, there is a distinct air of something like desperation and horror about her person. She is still in her traveling clothes, mud and demon-sludge black at the hem, and is pale under the winter blown pinch of color at her cheeks and nose. Maybe she has found out something dreadful from the wolf's corpse. Maybe it hadn't been Fade touched at all, merely possessed, and now is a corpse prowling the village hungering for the bones and flesh of something more human.

"Have you seen the landlady?"

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foisting time skip duties upon you pls oblige as whims dictate

acceptable