"I am glad that they.... Enjoy each other as company."
It was one thing, when she was no body. To hear about how those far beyond her got up too. Kashi had loved whispering about it and the other servants had embellished gleefully. But it was another to be standing in the room, appreciated furniture that was second to how she could see them look at each other.
"It isn't my business of course." which is as firm as she can manage, but mildly pleading. She'll set alight if she squirmed any more in embarrassment.
"No, but it will be difficult to avoid mention of it in Elgar'nan's service." More so than in any other. He shakes his head slightly and continues walking. "We will not be going near."
In case she needed the assurance. That was a torment she could deal with on another day. The smell of food grew stronger as they turned a corner and Solas greeted another in passing as he led her into the dining hall. The sounds of slaves laughing and eating, boisterous as always during their free time, was loud enough to make him lean in closer to speak.
"I will find us somewhere to seat and retrieve our food."
His voice is warm against her ear, which is a strange thing to note, not the sort of thing she ever did. But purpose it was some strange need from being denied her sight.
"Thank you." She leans in that little, closer to him. More in helpfulness than anything else. She might not be able to see very well, but she could hear how many people were moving about her. Easy enough to know that she could trip over someone like this. So she tucks herself in near and close.
With her close to his side, he finds open space at a table near where the food is being served and guides her hand to the edge of it to steady herself. One hand slides carefully to her upper back, touch light, in order to aid her should she find herself faltering. It isn't until she is seated that he withdraws from her.
"Is there anything I should avoid getting?" Since that would be far easier than knowing her preferences, depending on what is being served.
She reaches out where he has led her, using her hands to navigate the rest of the way. To find the seat, be sure of it before she lets herself sit down. Letting his hands guide her, trusting in him just as she is: blind. That he could hurt her, like this, like so many of Elgar'nan's slaves had just let her trip and not even given her the time of day, didn't seem to factor in. His hands were sure, and she let herself settle a comfortable weight into them.
And with relief, once she is seated, her eyes fall shut completely. The itch and pain was numbed, it was still an effort to keep them open.
"Without meat, please. Simple is... fine."
Her hands fall into her lap, her feet flat on the floor, taking up as little space as she could, hiding within what she could. Clothing that she shifted, her long dark hair falling down around her face.
He raises a brow at that request and her change in posture. Not entirely unusual, but unexpected. Solas has spent his fair share of time around Elgar'nan's domain though he is treated far differently as an outsider. Did they not care how another was brought into the fold? It made him wonder how much Elgar'nan encouraged them to be against one another, to stand on their own instead of with each other.
"No meat," he repeats in affirmation. And he adds, for whatever amount of assurance it would provide her, "No one will disturb you."
At least, those of Mythal's would know better and Elgar'nan's never ventured far enough to be here. Her request is heeded and he returns with a modest plate for himself and a more full one for her. Various fruits, vegetables, pieces of bread and cheese adorned it--simple, but filling. He sets it in front of her and slides into the seat across from her.
She stays quiet, eyes shut, after he leaves - though that concern is there. The little flinches where her hearing is too sharp. Her face turning to each one, reading on the reaction. A hand that hovers near her blade in a readiness that landed her in this mess to start with. She will fight, of course, she will fight.
But nothing comes, not until he comes back and she visibly relaxes to the sound of his voice. Her eyelids pushed open again. Taking a slow breath to get out of her own head, a thin shaking inhale and exhale. Settling instead to look over the food. "Thank you. It does."
Though she waits in hesitation before hunger gets the better of her. Her hand hovering, her fingers curled in, the sleeve falls away from the small of her wrists before she carefully picks up a piece of cheese. Raising it to her mouth and - eats as quickly as she can like she expects someone to take it off her.
He eats his food far more slowly and watches her with a raised brow. Someone was neglecting the care of those newly in their service if she was this hungry. Or did she fear food would not be forthcoming for some time?
"Frightened your food will run from you?" he asks. If she continued eating like that, she might choke. "No one will take it from you."
Anyone that tried would regret it, in any case. No doubt facing retribution from her first. The fight and ferocity he saw in her that day in the streets was there, underneath it all. Elgar'nan would be pleased if he could harness that for his own purposes.
She's well and truly on her forth piece when he speaks. It hadn't taken her long to understand how things worked for the newest of Elgar'nans people. She did not yet have the right to her own meal. She had only the right to fight for it. She'd been successful th day before but the injuries in the effort there of took their toll the next.
But self conscious, she stopped. Hovering with another piece of food she was about to cram in. So instead she took a smaller bite and forced herself to swallow before she took another.
Misunderstanding, for a moment. "I did not mean to be rude." She waits, still for it, a flinch in her words trying to skirt the blow.
He waves off her words. "You will need to try harder if you wish to be." With his place in Mythal's service, he's dealt with far worse than someone inhaling their food.
"I am in no rush to leave. You have time to savor it," he adds after a brief pause. "Have you been given duties to attend to while here?"
Was there a reason for her being here beyond 'breaking her in,' as it were? Solas knows what Elgar'nan himself is up to, but he would be naive to think there were not other motives for the visit. He watches her closely as he picks away at his food.
It's much easier when he asks to pick her food into little pieces then look at him as she makes him. "To... attend my lord, at his pleasure and entertainment." There is an embarrassment in her face - she didn't like to brag, to note even on her skills let alone be dragged into the spotlight. Nevermind how that might sound outside of what had been her tasks so far.
"He wants me to stay on hand at all times... in case he wants to impress."
"You are fortunate my lady has taken that mantle for now," he says off-handedly. The pair would keep themselves busy for the majority of Elgar'nan's stay, whether in politics or leisure. A decision of Mythal's he continually questioned when he was able and she dismissed without much thought.
"He will not find an easy audience here if he seeks to show a prized fighter."
There's the same flush again, but at least this time, she can skim right past in the guise of taking another small bite. "No... he says I am not to be... shown yet. At least beyond Lady Mythal's inspection."
She picks apart a little bit of bread, a precarious amount of stacking of cheese over it, before she eats that too. "I am to train... make myself strong. Prove if I am worth what he... bought me for. If I was worth saving at all." The words aren't hers, easy to tell - after all, she had been full of indignant rage, when they had brought her in. Numb to all else.
No, they were Elgar'nan's words to her. Newly marked, blinded and confused with the pain and grief.
"You have nothing to fear from her," he says readily. This would be her first time interacting so intimately with the Evanuris and Mythal was one she would have the easiest time with. If only all of them could be so civil.
"You are meant to be a warrior then?" No, that wasn't the right word for it. Elgar'nan wouldn't have gone through this much trouble to get her if he meant to use her as a common foot soldier. He taps the edge of his plate in consideration for a moment before adding, "A champion to further his goals?"
Yes, that sounded more likely. A strong fighter he could bring out to show the others who he had under his banner.
"She was... she did not touch me." That was something, which seems nothing. But in the days since she had been taken up by Elgar'nan, he had put his hands in her hair, tilted her face up with nails that had dug in to turn her this way and that, to inspect her. Then passed her over to those that cared just as much. Pawed and poked and prodded with harshly inspecting gaze. That Mythal did not immediately go to lay claim the second she was allowed... it was enough.
But to the rest, she flinches away from it - as if that were not answer enough for his question. Her fingers reach instead for another morsel of food, another small, scurried bite in the nervousness. Busying herself with it as she nods, slowly, little. "I will be presented at the next one of his... displays. When my skills are enough." The joke, the laughter around her head as they marred her face. She looks handsome with a weapon in her hands, that will do well. Now she will be thrown in and directed as he saw fit. "He expects I will do quite well, given the speed my temper gave me. He has put me to dancing, short swords, archery first."
She doesn't want it, of course she doesn't. She had wanted to protect a friend. In her worst nightmares, wildest dreams, it had never looked like this.
The unease she has is clear. He frowns as he studies her, watches her movements for the telltale signs of discomfort. She was not the first he had seen torn from what they knew and thrust into another life, one in which they had even less control of. There had to be a better way. He refused to believe otherwise.
"I am sorry. Even if it means little," he adds. He could not change her fate, not now. Any power he held was within Mythal's court and that all rested beneath her will. There would be no upsets in Elgar'nan's over one of his new slaves. She would become one of others he would 'collect' for such purposes. Solas hides his disgust at the thought with a sip of his drink. There had to be a better way. None of the People deserved to live like this, beneath the heels of another and forced to act as some prize.
"There is not much I can do to ease it. Here, no one will expect you to train or perform." A small respite, that was all he could offer. All that was within his limited power.
Her eyes are still mostly shut, enough to not see his reactions so well, but instead. To know the warm tone of his voice. To hear what he offers and so new this, so foolish to this, by the physical reaction she has, she takes him at his word with full trust. Her shoulders roll back and her breath comes easier. An openness and then -
- the smile curls a little at the corner of her mouth. Not too much, if she did it would hurt after all. But there, just the same. "That is for the best. I would hate to embarrass Mythal's own in their own quarters."
"Hate to does not mean will not," he says back dryly though there's a touch of amusement in his tone. At least she was smiling now. That was a small victory he would take with him even after she left. He picks slowly at his food.
"Do you have enough food?" Because if not, he's ready to shove what's left of his onto her plate.
Is it unseemly to admit she's starving? Probably. But it didn't change the fact she was.
"You have given me plenty... But I could still eat."
And dutifully, she holds her nearly cleared plate up to receive more. "I was good... Do you know? Before he took me away from my life. There wasnt a person faster than me." hurt, perhaps, that this is what it took to get that noticed. "I think that I must be faster still if I am going to survive him."
He lets that admission go and merely adds more to her plate from his. Whatever pride she had left, he would prefer her to keep than hold her hunger as a point of weakness. She had been through far too much already.
"You must. You will find others in your ranks with familiar stories to your own, ones that will welcome you rather than add to your trials." In their own ways. They were harder to find than the others of Elgar'nan's, but it would help her survive. Once she was better and of 'use' to their ranks. "What I saw of your technique was impressive." There's a brief pause as he recalls her careful movements, executed with precision and all done 'fast,' as she puts it. "Elegant."
And to think, such an action had been all it took to change her life.
She devours it much like she did the first batch. If a little more seemly than practically inhaling it, she doesn't hesitate in beginning to eat as much as she can. Only paused to fumble in reaching for her drink that searches by touch rather than unerringly knowing where it is by sight.
Listening as he speaks and - his compliment peaks a warmth in her face. A little stumble. "Oh -" She shouldn't think too much, undoubtedly it was just a kindness for him to say so but... even so. It might be nice as she goes to sip quickly to cover it. No one had ever paid her much attention. Not when Kashi was about. How could she hold a candle to her friend? Didn't want to, particularly. It only got Kashi in trouble. The kind of trouble that had landed her here. But her skills, her abilities, those she worked for. Spent every waking moment in the training thereof.
" - no one has ever called it that before. Thank-you. Usually, they call it a problem."
That he is the first is a surprise. It's clear from the way she stumbles through accepting his words that she is very much unused to praise. For all the good in her, no one has thought to recognize it? He shakes his head lightly at her reaction and leans back in his seat. A gesture that at least helps to contain his continued annoyance at how Elgar'nan runs his people.
"You have been around many with poorer eyesight than yours presently," he says in a tone that heavily implies he would gladly say it to Elgar'nan himself if given the opportunity. "It is a poise very few possess."
She coughs in surprise on her swallow. Hastily clearing her throat - another mouthful. "Thank you. You don't need to say that."
But she likes it, certainly, at least as the little smile is going. The suddenly all too self-conscious way she holds herself. Lifting to brush her hair behind her ear, polite, mostly. Fumbling to direct the attention elsewhere. "You must have seen many great fighters, before anything I've ever done."
He gives a small smile of amusement at her reaction and shrugs. There were a great many things he didn't need to say or do, but that never stopped him. A fact that drove Mythal and all he knew to the edge. Ah, well. It hadn't gotten him killed. Yet.
"Through my time here, yes. I see no use in false flattery." He's as prideful as his name implies. Any words of praise he gives are earned. "If you find yourself free of obligation after your meal, we could walk the halls. It would serve you well to get familiar with them now."
As much as she could with her sight the way it was, but it would be a start.
He gives her this little smile and she waits maybe, for him to take it away from her, but instead, it grows. Feeling her lashes against her cheek as her eyes scrunch with the giddiness of kind words. A predisposition before they had tried to take it away to be quick to laughter, quick to smile. Before she has the good sense to cover it, wetting her lips, biting white blunt teeth into the full of her bottom lips.
"I would like that."
And she goes about the business of wolfing down the rest of the meal, like the half-starved thing she is.
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It was one thing, when she was no body. To hear about how those far beyond her got up too. Kashi had loved whispering about it and the other servants had embellished gleefully. But it was another to be standing in the room, appreciated furniture that was second to how she could see them look at each other.
"It isn't my business of course." which is as firm as she can manage, but mildly pleading. She'll set alight if she squirmed any more in embarrassment.
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In case she needed the assurance. That was a torment she could deal with on another day. The smell of food grew stronger as they turned a corner and Solas greeted another in passing as he led her into the dining hall. The sounds of slaves laughing and eating, boisterous as always during their free time, was loud enough to make him lean in closer to speak.
"I will find us somewhere to seat and retrieve our food."
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"Thank you." She leans in that little, closer to him. More in helpfulness than anything else. She might not be able to see very well, but she could hear how many people were moving about her. Easy enough to know that she could trip over someone like this. So she tucks herself in near and close.
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"Is there anything I should avoid getting?" Since that would be far easier than knowing her preferences, depending on what is being served.
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And with relief, once she is seated, her eyes fall shut completely. The itch and pain was numbed, it was still an effort to keep them open.
"Without meat, please. Simple is... fine."
Her hands fall into her lap, her feet flat on the floor, taking up as little space as she could, hiding within what she could. Clothing that she shifted, her long dark hair falling down around her face.
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"No meat," he repeats in affirmation. And he adds, for whatever amount of assurance it would provide her, "No one will disturb you."
At least, those of Mythal's would know better and Elgar'nan's never ventured far enough to be here. Her request is heeded and he returns with a modest plate for himself and a more full one for her. Various fruits, vegetables, pieces of bread and cheese adorned it--simple, but filling. He sets it in front of her and slides into the seat across from her.
"I hope this satisfies."
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But nothing comes, not until he comes back and she visibly relaxes to the sound of his voice. Her eyelids pushed open again. Taking a slow breath to get out of her own head, a thin shaking inhale and exhale. Settling instead to look over the food. "Thank you. It does."
Though she waits in hesitation before hunger gets the better of her. Her hand hovering, her fingers curled in, the sleeve falls away from the small of her wrists before she carefully picks up a piece of cheese. Raising it to her mouth and - eats as quickly as she can like she expects someone to take it off her.
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"Frightened your food will run from you?" he asks. If she continued eating like that, she might choke. "No one will take it from you."
Anyone that tried would regret it, in any case. No doubt facing retribution from her first. The fight and ferocity he saw in her that day in the streets was there, underneath it all. Elgar'nan would be pleased if he could harness that for his own purposes.
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But self conscious, she stopped. Hovering with another piece of food she was about to cram in. So instead she took a smaller bite and forced herself to swallow before she took another.
Misunderstanding, for a moment. "I did not mean to be rude." She waits, still for it, a flinch in her words trying to skirt the blow.
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"I am in no rush to leave. You have time to savor it," he adds after a brief pause. "Have you been given duties to attend to while here?"
Was there a reason for her being here beyond 'breaking her in,' as it were? Solas knows what Elgar'nan himself is up to, but he would be naive to think there were not other motives for the visit. He watches her closely as he picks away at his food.
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"He wants me to stay on hand at all times... in case he wants to impress."
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"He will not find an easy audience here if he seeks to show a prized fighter."
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She picks apart a little bit of bread, a precarious amount of stacking of cheese over it, before she eats that too. "I am to train... make myself strong. Prove if I am worth what he... bought me for. If I was worth saving at all." The words aren't hers, easy to tell - after all, she had been full of indignant rage, when they had brought her in. Numb to all else.
No, they were Elgar'nan's words to her. Newly marked, blinded and confused with the pain and grief.
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"You are meant to be a warrior then?" No, that wasn't the right word for it. Elgar'nan wouldn't have gone through this much trouble to get her if he meant to use her as a common foot soldier. He taps the edge of his plate in consideration for a moment before adding, "A champion to further his goals?"
Yes, that sounded more likely. A strong fighter he could bring out to show the others who he had under his banner.
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But to the rest, she flinches away from it - as if that were not answer enough for his question. Her fingers reach instead for another morsel of food, another small, scurried bite in the nervousness. Busying herself with it as she nods, slowly, little. "I will be presented at the next one of his... displays. When my skills are enough." The joke, the laughter around her head as they marred her face. She looks handsome with a weapon in her hands, that will do well. Now she will be thrown in and directed as he saw fit. "He expects I will do quite well, given the speed my temper gave me. He has put me to dancing, short swords, archery first."
She doesn't want it, of course she doesn't. She had wanted to protect a friend. In her worst nightmares, wildest dreams, it had never looked like this.
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"I am sorry. Even if it means little," he adds. He could not change her fate, not now. Any power he held was within Mythal's court and that all rested beneath her will. There would be no upsets in Elgar'nan's over one of his new slaves. She would become one of others he would 'collect' for such purposes. Solas hides his disgust at the thought with a sip of his drink. There had to be a better way. None of the People deserved to live like this, beneath the heels of another and forced to act as some prize.
"There is not much I can do to ease it. Here, no one will expect you to train or perform." A small respite, that was all he could offer. All that was within his limited power.
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- the smile curls a little at the corner of her mouth. Not too much, if she did it would hurt after all. But there, just the same. "That is for the best. I would hate to embarrass Mythal's own in their own quarters."
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"Do you have enough food?" Because if not, he's ready to shove what's left of his onto her plate.
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"You have given me plenty... But I could still eat."
And dutifully, she holds her nearly cleared plate up to receive more. "I was good... Do you know? Before he took me away from my life. There wasnt a person faster than me." hurt, perhaps, that this is what it took to get that noticed. "I think that I must be faster still if I am going to survive him."
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"You must. You will find others in your ranks with familiar stories to your own, ones that will welcome you rather than add to your trials." In their own ways. They were harder to find than the others of Elgar'nan's, but it would help her survive. Once she was better and of 'use' to their ranks. "What I saw of your technique was impressive." There's a brief pause as he recalls her careful movements, executed with precision and all done 'fast,' as she puts it. "Elegant."
And to think, such an action had been all it took to change her life.
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Listening as he speaks and - his compliment peaks a warmth in her face. A little stumble. "Oh -" She shouldn't think too much, undoubtedly it was just a kindness for him to say so but... even so. It might be nice as she goes to sip quickly to cover it. No one had ever paid her much attention. Not when Kashi was about. How could she hold a candle to her friend? Didn't want to, particularly. It only got Kashi in trouble. The kind of trouble that had landed her here. But her skills, her abilities, those she worked for. Spent every waking moment in the training thereof.
" - no one has ever called it that before. Thank-you. Usually, they call it a problem."
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"You have been around many with poorer eyesight than yours presently," he says in a tone that heavily implies he would gladly say it to Elgar'nan himself if given the opportunity. "It is a poise very few possess."
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But she likes it, certainly, at least as the little smile is going. The suddenly all too self-conscious way she holds herself. Lifting to brush her hair behind her ear, polite, mostly. Fumbling to direct the attention elsewhere. "You must have seen many great fighters, before anything I've ever done."
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"Through my time here, yes. I see no use in false flattery." He's as prideful as his name implies. Any words of praise he gives are earned. "If you find yourself free of obligation after your meal, we could walk the halls. It would serve you well to get familiar with them now."
As much as she could with her sight the way it was, but it would be a start.
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"I would like that."
And she goes about the business of wolfing down the rest of the meal, like the half-starved thing she is.
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