mother of otherness, eat me.

his hands against her face, lungs still unable to get a full breath beneath them, she can only see how bright his eyes are. he calls her nickname, she wants to hear it again, a buckling at her knees — since when does she go weak? there has never been a moment in her life where she felt as she did now, soft and tender, vulnerable. thumb against her cheek, a gentle caress as he leans in, and she feels the soft touch of his lips on hers. la'harya is dizzy with it, the only balance his touch against her; her own hand comes up for purchase, staying against kaidan's jaw, indulgent in the way fingers curl slightly, only just feeling the scratch of her nails against skin. she lets out a muffled hum into his lips as lungs finally breath again.

rise up oh flame, come join the game. they started a frenzy but we'll take the blame. a bare - chested dame who goes by no name — their arsenal's empty, all they got is shame.

Cassandra thought of La'harya with a degree of pity. To be dubbed a hero once was enough for a lifetime. To be heralded as one twice was a misfortune, and that was disregarding the title of Andraste's Herald following her around. There had been many a heated discussions with Leliana behind closed doors, debates, wonderings, but no proof, only rumors. And perhaps that's all they ever would be--rumors.

The seeker was not blind. Why would an elf want to be associated with the Chantry anyways?

Years of practice brought a pitiful pile of frozen sticks to a roaring blaze within minutes. Cassandra had brought it upon herself to hang a pot of water to boil, something to heat their bones, along with some haphazardly placed torn pieces of rucksack to sit on instead of snow. She was just kneeling to check on the heat balm near the fire when La'harya's voice fell upon her ears.

"Thank you." It was clipped; short with the Inquisitor. The momentary silence tells her that there is more to be said, the crunch of footsteps absent.

The balm has begun melting, but still remains solid at the bottom. Not ready yet. "Were it towards someone who was afraid of you, perhaps the circumstances would be different," Cassandra replies evenly. She sighs, then, as if to relinquish the irritation towards La'harya. "This... is not easy. We all know this, most of all you," she observes, looking to the other woman when she gets to her feet. She brushes snow off of her knees.

“ even before the injury i was a bitch in the cold, it's no excuse. ” tell her you're grateful for heating a balm, but the words can't get past her throat, stuck in her closed esophagus. la'harya follows cassandra's advice, taking a seat on a laid out rucksack; the cold seeps in through her pants, and she knows that standing again is going to be a pain, but thank the gods it's not wet yet, the warmth from the fire hitting her knees at a comfortable distance.

she's not an idiot: la'harya saw cassandra's own hand twitching, the cold disturbing her joints just as bad. the seeker was quiet about it, however; there had been no inclination of sort that her companion had injury akin to hers in any measurement. la'harya wonders if that is by design: if there is no one who knows, there is no one who underestimates you. she is not so fortunate in this aspect, her own scars existing in the minds of everyone present in denerim, and word spread almost too quickly of her predicament; too many wondering if she'd live through the disaster, if the blight had not taken her, would her casualty be attributed to the aftereffects? wynne had worked tirelessly on her hip before running out of lyrium, before they dragged her from the top of fort drakon. she was limp in their arms, held barely aloft by magic that attempted to sew her broken ligaments together again.

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