a formidable foe appears

He smiles as Hamal hurries under the eaves, brushing water from his face.

“Warden,” Zevran says, a bit delayed.

Hamal nods at him. He gathers up his braids and squeezes the water from them.

They have a nice rapport, he and Hamal. At least that is the impression Zevran has, ever since Hamal invited him hunting a week prior—while knowing damn well that Zevran never hunted for his food, could scarcely fire a bow, and had no interest in doing so.

No matter. He’d rightly interpreted the invitation’s motive. Now the question was whether this marked a new shift for them, or if the Warden’s curiosity had already been sated.

It’s hard to tell. He’s a quiet man.

“Couldn’t find anything,” Hamal sighs. “Land’s blighted to hell so anything we scavenge is bound to be tainted.”

“Ah,” Zevran says, not really interested in that. “So it is to be cabbage soup again?”

Hamal just smiles at him. Walking towards the cart, he waves him over wordlessly, and, though confused, Zevran follows him, drawing right up to him, close enough to be fully aware of the water still dripping from his form, and the smell of petrichor, and pine, and underneath that the soft scent of yarrow from his soap.

“There’s a granary behind the farm,” Hamal says. He pulls out a sealed clay pot, shiny with varnish. “And I have some yeast from when we passed through Redcliffe. At the very least we’ll make bread.”

He smiles at Zevran, fully pleased with himself, and Zevran cannot help but smile back.

“Good,” he says. “That is good. But you know, I am not sure we should go back just yet. It is rather rainy, and we would not want the yeast to get wet.”

Hamal hums thoughtfully. “It’s sealed.”

“Allegedly sealed,” Zevran tries. “Not to decry the no-doubt fine culinary experts of Redcliffe Village, but why risk it? I am sure the others will not mind waiting on us.”

Hamal gives it a moment of thorough consideration. Seeing Zevran’s point, he gives a mellow laugh, then closes the distance between them. Zevran is struck by a feeling he cannot attribute to memory, but which he knows intimately all the same.

And though he cannot recall it, the feeling is this: A rainy street in Rialto, an unseasonably cold winter, and a peal of thunder that scares the other children in the apartment half to death. But not him. Zevran laughs in startled surprise. He’s never heard thunder. He wants to see it for himself. He runs outside, not caring about the rain. No one has yet told him that thunder is only a sound accompanying an electric discharge during a storm, and not some tangible thing to chase down and catch. But he’ll catch it. He will.

And now the feeling is this: A barn in Ferelden during the end of the world, and a dying man leaning him up against a wooden cart and kissing him, and the taste of rainwater on his tongue. Zevran bunches up his hands in Hamal’s soaked shirt and clings to him, no longer caring if he gets wet. A rivulet of ice-cold water runs down Hamal’s nose and onto Zevran’s cheek, meeting its destination after falling miles through the saturated sky.

A low rumble of thunder sounds over the fields.