babblingrook

[babblingrook]

*screaming this through a megaphone*

yeah I'm still on about it but I'm right so

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I am simply unable to focus on what I should be focusing on (editing and posting the final 8 chapters of my current fic in progress) when I have been consumed by Dana brainrot (writing a new Emmrookanis fic featuring this gorgeous girl).

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Oh, sweet death 💚

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Crow in repose 💜

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Ope.

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Obsessed with how adorable this commission of my upcoming fic's Rook (Dana) turned out! Done by the lovely @blessed-pudding

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got hit by this banter between Taash and Lucanis while playing today and it's so goddamn funny (ofc it doesnt go exactly like this, but I had to adapt it to this iconic meme)

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Thursday Bangers (on a Friday)

Hosted by @woundedsoul12

(Soft tagging @amlusa and @cherrytiefling)

And I'd give up forever to touch you 'Cause I know that you feel me somehow You're the closest to Heaven that I'll ever be And I don't wanna go home right now ~ Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls

This week, I choose violence. Here's a drabble about Dana, the OC for the newest fic I'm working on. I really like how this turned out, so it will likely make it into the fic in some capacity.

It never comes as a surprise when Dana wakes up with a stiff neck anymore. Sure, she’s used to sleeping in all manner of places: the cramped crew quarters of a raider ship, under the stars with only the warm Rivain breeze as a blanket, the lumpy mattress of her room back in The Galley. But there’s just something about the stiff leather this chaise lounge is upholstered in that leaves her unable to fully rotate her head every morning.

She’s slow to rise off the chaise and groans as she rolls onto her tiptoes. She yawns, stretching her arms upwards—except she can’t. Her right shoulder screams in protest with a jolt of white-hot pain the moment she attempts to lift it over her head.

Her shield—she grumbles to herself upon remembering the previous day’s combat. How that Antaam soldier rammed into her so hard, it knocked a bolt on the handle of her shield loose and sent the towering Qunari barreling straight into her right side. After the dust of the fight settled, Emmrich all but teleported to her, clucking with worry and insisting they find somewhere for him to evaluate her shoulder for injury. And Lucanis—his damn smug remark about how, ‘this wouldn’t have happened if you listened to me about the importance of regular weapon maintenance.’

“The importance of regular weapon maintenance,” she mutters to herself in an absurdly mocking tone. 

Yet, she snatches her shield from the table and makes her way out to the workbench in the courtyard—for as irritating as Lucanis’s unsolicited advice can be at times, he’s often right, much to her chagrin.

The grumbling and incoherent cursing continue as she tosses the shield on the work surface. But something in the corner of her eye catches her attention, makes her freeze in place for a beat. A chest, one that certainly was not there the last time she walked through the courtyard.

A folded piece of parchment sits on top of the chest. Dana bites at the inside of her cheek as she opens and scans over the note.

“This chest just sort of… appeared earlier this morning.  I didn’t open it since it seems to be… yours? Hopefully whatever’s inside is at least useful. - Neve”

Underneath where the note was left, the name “Dana” has been burned into the wooden lid of the chest. But she doesn’t recognize the chest. Her fingers curl under the lip of the lid, hesitating for just a breath before she throws it open. 

Is this armor? 

The first item she grabs out is a thick piece of fur, almost like a shrug or maybe a scarf. Her grip tightens on the bundled up fur, bringing it to her nose subconsciously to inhale the scent. It smells like snarky remarks thrown at old friends. Like the burden of being forced to wear a title. Like the glue that binds what were once strangers together. It smells like laughter and masked grief and late nights and longing. It smells like the crackle of magic. It smells like… Kirkwall…

Dana abandons any intention to inspect each piece of armor one by one, rather just gathers the pile—jutting metal plates and all—and takes almost robotic steps back towards her room.

For the first time in recent memory, her mind is just—blank. She drops down onto the chaise lounge with the bundle of armor on her lap. Her thumbs trace over worn fabric, sharp points of the metallic pauldron, a split leather belt. She hugs the pieces tight against her chest, like it could ever replicate the feel of arms wrapping around her, gentle and known.

Her mind still lays barren, save for one singular question: how did this even get here?

The armor shouldn’t fit her. She knows this. And yet she stands before the tall mirror and slips each piece on. The pants should just fall off of her more narrow hips, and yet they hug her like they were made to her exact measurements. The chest piece should be inches too long on her torso, but it hits her hips at just the right spot. The gauntlet and pauldron seem to mold right to her arm as she slides them in place. Then, once the final piece is added—once she wraps the fur behind her neck and buckles it into place over her chest—she stands before the mirror, unsure of who it is staring back at her.

This armor…

The memory of the last time Dana saw this armor makes her chest tighten with a pain that’s old, long separated by the distance of passing years.

She liked spending her time at the horse stables the most in the week she’d been at Skyhold. The Warden who slept up in the loft was often gone during the day, following the Inquisitor into whatever adventure or battle or diplomatic mission they were pulled on that day. This left her free to climb up the creaking ladder and find a spot to settle in amongst the bales of hay.

From there, she’d take out a small drawing pad from her pack and sketch portraits of the Inquisition soldiers, the merchants, and the dignitaries who came to visit. Sometimes she’d even tear the page out and pass it to the person she’d drawn before scurrying off towards where her aunt waited for her to join the others for dinner.

Moonlight peeked through the small gaps between the roof overhead that day while she was still furiously scribbling ink into parchment. Skyhold was near empty, absent of the squeaking armor of the soldiers, no messengers scurried back and forth across the grounds, even the scouts hadn’t made an appearance once since first light that morning.

The ladder behind her groaned from the weight of someone climbing up into the loft. 

“Hey, kid.”

She expected it might be the Warden, returning back from a long day eager to collapse onto his cot. Instead, she was met with the baritone voice of her uncle.

“You’re back!” she shouted, nearly leaping from her spot amongst the hay to greet him. “Where’s Aunt Marian?”

He didn’t return her smile, instead holding a pained, distant look behind his eyes. He grabbed both of her hands in his, dropping down on one knee, despite the fact that his dwarven frame put him around the same height as her back then. 

“I’m so sorry, Chicken,” he said, his eyes glassy with unshed tears. “She’s... gone.”

Ten years. It’s been over ten years since she’s seen this armor… since she’s seen…

Dana weeps. And for a moment, she’s that teenage girl again, held between the broad arms of the uncle who had just lost his best friend. 

The armor of a champion. In her reflection, she notices the corner of a folded piece of paper sticking out just the slightest from one of the pant pockets. She wipes the tears from her face with the back of her hand, then slowly slides the paper free. It’s worn and yellow from age, smoothed in the way that only happens to pages that have been handled countless times.

Her throat tightens as she unfolds the page, because somehow, she just knows what she’ll find inside.

The sketch is rough, especially considering how much her skills have improved in the decade since this drawing. Her Aunt Marian stares up from the page, one corner of her mouth quirked up in a characteristic sly grin.

At the top of the page, there’s the note Dana had written the day she gave it to her aunt: ‘Kick some demon ass for me! -Chicken’

But underneath that, another note—the ink fresh and smudged in spots, the handwriting not her own: ‘Still fighting. See you soon my little Chicken. -Aunt Marian’

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Chapter 17 of my Rook x Lucanis fic, Like a Matchstick is live!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/64764028/chapters/170875759

Small chapter excerpt:

A familiar book sat on the edge of Rook’s bed, the sight of it causing the envelopes to drop from his hand, scattering across the stone floor. He turned the book over in his hands, fingers gripping tighter as the familiar text looked up at him. The cover read, “The Joyous Wyvern.” Lucanis hadn’t seen this book since he was a small child.

Although a bit unnerving, this was not the first time an object from someone’s past had mysteriously appeared in the Lighthouse. Neve once found a page torn from a book on her desk—a page that was identical, down to the jagged ripped edges, of the one that’d been slipped under her office door back in Minrathous years ago. Emmrich found figurines from a game one of his former colleagues used to force him to play when they were students. Davrin found the first hunting knife given to him by his Uncle, one he had lost almost a decade ago. So, for whatever reason, the Lighthouse had decided now was the time for Lucanis’s own reminder of the past.

He fell down onto the chaise lounge, flipping the book from his childhood open to one of his favorite parts of the story. In between the two pages there, a note had been shoved into the binding—a note he had never seen before.

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I feel personally attacked by the accuracy of this...

Reading my own fanfiction is basically just a rollercoaster of emotional whiplash.

20% of the time: “Hold on. I wrote this? This is fire. This is emotionally devastating in the best way. This scene is dripping with tension. I’m a literary perfectionist. Someone give me a book deal.”

80% of the time: “Straight to jail. Immediate prison. Why is everyone’s breath hitching?. I used the word ‘gaze’ three times in one paragraph like I was possessed. Did I think 'his eyes darkened' was profound? Why is everyone clenching their jaws? Why is someone whispering 'their name like a prayer' again?? No one talks like this. What is this dialogue. Why are there so many weird metaphors and em-dashes…”

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Having an "I miss my wife" moment. And by my wife, I mean Ophelia, the OC for my current fic, Like a Matchstick.

She is babygirl, sorry!

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Thursday Bangers

"Baby I'm so into you

Darling, if you only knew

All the things that flow through my mind "

- Fantasy Mariah Carey

Tagged by @amlusa

Sooo, I'm working on developing a new Rook for the next fic I want to write and trying to sort out her personality/voice/backstory. I used this week's Thursday Bangers prompt to write this silly little piece about a 17 or 18 year old Dana on her last day spending time with Aunt Isabela in Rivain. It's dumb and unpolished but weirdly cute and endearing, and I think I'm in love with this new character already.

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“What’s with the sour face?” Isabela asked, dropping down onto the dining hall bench with an exaggerated sigh. 

Across from her, Dana hunched over a drawing pad, fingertips stained black from the charcoal pencil sweeping in large arcs over the parchment. She lifted her chin slightly, lips pulling up into a smirk while her eyes remained glued on her most recent attempt at capturing a Rivain sunrise on paper.

“Sour face,” she scoffed to herself. Her thumb pressed against the page, smudging the darker bits of the drawing to soften the harsh lines.

“Eat,” Isabela said, sliding a dented metal plate across the table. “I’m not sending you back to Kirkwall looking like a strong wind might blow you away.”

Dana scoffed again, lips still pulled into a half-grin when the plate collided with her knuckles. Just imagining the harshly worded letter her uncle might send Isabela upon her return had her choking back laughter.

“He’ll still find something to blame you for,” Dana remarked, grabbing a large slice of melon from the plate. The promise of sunny days, the saltwater breeze, afternoon dips in the ocean, as much as she cherished those parts of her time on Rivain’s coast, she wouldn’t shed a single tear over leaving behind the cooking of her winters spent with Isabela’s crew. At least the region boasted enough fresh fruit to counter the barbaric amounts of meat and cheese those heathens ate.

“Of course he will,” Isabela muttered to herself, folding her arms across her chest. “Damn broody elf.”

Back to Kirkwall. Back to her final year of classes. Back to watchful eyes and combat training and stern reminders to stay out of trouble, stop giving the city guards a hard time because you were caught out past curfew again. Back to the questions of what she planned to do after school finished. Where she wanted to go. Who she wanted to be.

There’s a wonderful art program in Orlais.

The city guard is always looking for new recruits.

Keep getting into enough trouble, and you’ll have no choice but to join your uncle in the Wardens.

Maybe just take a year off, kid. Try things out. See what you like.

The door to the dining hall burst open as two of the other members of Isabela’s crew came stumbling in, pink in the cheeks with matching brown bottles of liquor in hand.

“Dana!” the two men shouted in unison. They fell down onto the bench on either side of Dana, sandwiching her between their similarly broad, tanned shoulders.

“Marcus, Rudy, leave the poor girl alone,” Isabela scolded, waving the tip of her dagger between the two. “Let her enjoy her final night of freedom.”

“S’what we’re tryin’ ta do!” Marcus slurred, bumping into Dana’s shoulder.

“C’mon Chicky, let’s dance.”

Dana couldn’t help but roll her eyes at Rudy’s consistency in referring to her by her family’s childhood nickname for her. Though he was the only one that shortened the usual ‘Chicken’ to ‘Chicky.’ 

Before she could get a chance to protest his offer or duck under the table, out of his reach, he lifted her by the shoulders from her spot on the bench and began twirling her around the dining hall.

“There’s not even music playing, you oaf,” she asserted, pounding a fist against the front of his breastplate. 

He laughed, a deep, booming sound that rattled in his chest. He likely knew what she was masking behind the ‘sour face’ and annoyance to her tone. Though they’d never get her to admit it, she’d miss this group of idiots even with the stale liquor on their breaths and the uproarious, drunken laughter that often woke her up in the middle of the night.

“Music, huh?” Rudy spun her faster, her legs dangling helplessly above the ground. “Marcus, music!”

She’d miss the sting of sunburn after staying in the ocean for too long.

“Baby I’m so into you,” Marcus belted out from his spot on the bench.

She’d miss the new, creative ways Isabela would craft insults to her crew.

“Darling, if you only knew!” he continued singing, charmingly out of key. 

She’d miss the dank caves and the waterfalls and the hum of insects.

“All the things that flow through my miiiiind.” Marcus’s head fell against the table with a soft thud, the drunken idiot grinning up at them with his eyes barely open.

She’d miss the lack of a schedule, or curfews, or expectations, or questions about her plans for the future. Maker, she’d miss it all.

With Marcus having all but given up his attempt to serenade them, Rudy lowered Dana back onto the ground with more grace than might be expected out of someone so inebriated. She took quick, albeit wobbly steps, back over to the table to gather up her drawing supplies before the now snoring Marcus might ruin her sketch with drool.

“You know, Chicken,” Isabela said, her tone cool, one eyebrow raised. “After this year, you could always come back. Become a Lord.”

Dana’s head jerked up, eyes brightening at the suggestion. “Wait, really?”

“Really, really,” Isabela replied. “Now, rest up. Ship leaves just after first light tomorrow.”

Dana retired to her room on the second floor, clutching the mess of drawing supplies tight against her chest. She may not have succeeded in nailing her drawing this time, but now, as long as she could make it through this year, there was the promise of many more Rivain sunrises for her to get it right.

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4. skill issue

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So ridiculously in love with how K brought my OC, Ophelia to life. Thank you so, so fucking much K!

Another art commission DONE!

(For the lovely @babblingrook)