#I also did not wake up on time yesterday for sehri but I wanted to fast so bad so I just did it

[darksisterswielder]

Eid Mubarak to all my fellow lovely muslims! I hope you have/had a lovely day and that this ramadan you were able to deepen your connection to God, recognize and learn new things about yourself, and that your new insights and thoughts brought about by your fast may help you better and heal yourself in the future ❤️❤️❤️

[orodrethsgeek]

♔ -- Lahariel (or Mahanon) finding Liriel wearing his shirt.

Writing this gave me so many OT4 feelings; I hope you like it and that I did Liriel justice

Lahariel wakes from a sound sleep and doesn’t know why. There are no little feet stumbling among the blankets and furs, or kicking or stepping on unwary sleepers; the wards on the children’s room haven’t tripped. The sounds of camp outside are normal, peaceful: the faint banter of the nighttime guards, sleepy lowing from the halla pens. Mahanon is curled happily in his arms, Solas is dreaming deep–

Liriel is missing.

Lahariel sits up slowly, untangling himself from Mahanon as he goes. His husband makes soft complaining noises, but Lahariel shuffles him gently into the gap Liriel left behind until he subsides, snuggling up to Solas. He allows himself a brief moment to look at both of them, their red and gold braids mingling together, and smiles. He tucks a heavier fur in behind Mahanon’s back, then turns to rustle through the pile of their clothes from the day before. He finds his pants, but not his shirt, and pulls them on with a mental shrug; good enough.

He looks in on the children’s compartment as he passes by, on the off-chance Liriel is there. He sees little Vela, a lump at Cel’s side, and in the farther corner Eolas and Tabren are coiled so closely together he can hardly tell whose limbs are whose, but there is no sign of their mother. He hadn’t truly expected there to be.

Outside, the air is winter-chill, and Lahariel watches his breath hiss between his teeth as it hits him. He slides the outer aravel door shut firmly behind him and leaps lightly down to the ground, skipping the creaking stair altogether. His arms are already prickling with the cold, his toes protesting, but Lahariel ignores all that, deliberating.

In the end, he follows his gut instinct. They had made camp yesterday not far from a statue of Fen’Harel. Liriel had been laughing then, teasing Solas about leaving an offering of eggs for the old elvhen trickster, and Solas’ eyes had gleamed as he said, deceptively mildly, “May the Dread Wolf take you,” and Liriel had grinned, wicked, and said, “Oh, he definitely will if I have anything to say about it.”

Now she’s curled up between the stone wolf’s paws, staring unseeing into the middle distance, her silver hair a beacon in the dim light. She’s practically swimming in his missing shirt, the hem tucked up over her knees, the collar slipping off one of her shoulders. That’s two mysteries solved, then.

He makes sure to crunch a few twigs underfoot as he approaches, makes himself walk slow when everything in him wants to rush forward. She doesn’t give any sign that she notices his arrival, but when he crouches down beside her she says, “‘lo Hariel,” in a dull, hollow voice.

“Hey,” he answers, reaching out to stroke down the knobs of her spine. She doesn’t lean into the touch, but something in the set of her shoulders loosens, just a little, so he does it again, and again. He starts counting silently to himself, each ridge and dip, letting his eyes close. It’s been years since he’s needed to smoke, but at times like this he finds himself missing his old pipe.

Liriel snuffles, her back twitching beneath his fingers as she rubs her nose on his sleeve. “Being stupid,” she mutters, almost to herself. No, he thinks, but stays quiet, waiting, in case anything else is forthcoming.

It doesn’t for the longest time. Lahariel settles out of his crouch, sitting cross-legged on the ground behind her. A while after that he tugs at her, gently enough she can ignore it if she wants. Instead she moves with it, spilling back into his lap with a sigh. She smells like him, he notices absently, though that might just be his shirt. She’s cold beneath it, her feet little points of ice against his thigh; Lahariel wraps an arm around her, cups both hands around first one of her feet, then the other. The shirt slipped when she moved and now there’s an undeniably tantalizing strip of her thigh visible. For a moment he entertains the idea of following it to its source, of leaning in and whispering, “I know how to warm us up,” right in her ear, in that voice that always makes her breath hitch.  

It’s a nice thought. Perhaps later. Perhaps when they finally make their way back to their sleeping husbands they can wake Solas and Mahanon up and take turns with her just the way she likes, until she’s sleepy and sated and this present sadness is nothing more than a fleeting memory. Later, he tells himself firmly, and puts the thought away.

“It’s not fair,” she mutters at last. “Stop the town crier, right; ‘life isn’t fair; also water is wet.’” Lahariel muffles a humorless snort, rests his chin on her head. “But it isn’t,” she continues. “I keep thinking that I’ve got you and Hanon and Solas and the kids and Wycome and—everything. And they got buried.”

He doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say—words won’t unbury her brother or mother, anymore than they’ll resurrect his clan. He kisses the top of her head and starts rubbing her back again, and eventually Liriel sighs, presses her face into his neck.

He thinks of little Sehris, and Seheron fading into his twin sister’s shadow, and of the original Velanril. He thinks about old Hahren Paivel and Master Ilen and all the children who never lived long enough to take their vallaslin.How odd it is, that they’ve spent their lives circling around back to each other like this.

“I love you,” he says into her hair. Liriel makes a small noise and sniffs again, but less wetly than before. His eyes slip shut almost of their own accord; he’s gotten used to sleeping through the night. Sometimes that hurts worse than the insomnia ever did. He wishes, fiercely, that Liriel didn’t know that pain as well as he.

“… Hariel?”

“Mmm?”

“I stole your shirt.”

“You can have it,” he promises, and kisses her again.

Miscellaneous details I couldn’t entirely work into the prompt:  

Solas put up wards in the children’s room so that the kids can’t hear if their parents are getting freaky when they share an aravel you’re welcome Celysel. He also puts up a ward that lets them know if a puppy is on their way to their parents’ room.

Aravel interiors can be disassembled and the partitions put back up in different ways depending on what the occupants need. Also as a space-saving measure, aravel doors slide into and out of the walls instead of opening like Western-style doors.