#additionally i'm hoping the language barriers aren't too confusing

[ghostwise]

Overgrown for the prompts?

She finds him in the orchard, among the flies, mold, and rotting fruit.

The sickly sweet odor of a thousand dead plums is an assault on her senses. Leonor reels back, dizzied. Nobody has tended to the orchards at Quinta de Talpa. For years they have been left to grow wild, an interruption of the ecosystem, sucking up all the water and nutrients in the soil yet feeding no one. A space dedicated to nothing more than decay.

It feels appropriate.

She has been thinking about her and Rinna’s situation. They came here looking for an escape, but lately it feels like a dead end. What once seemed like a promising start has become much like this orchard; untenable and stagnant.

By the time Mahariel reaches her she is miserable, looking at him as if he were the very cause of everything wrong in her life. It’s not too far from the truth.

“I wish you’d never come here,” she says, too angry to try and be clever with him.

Hamal looks at her, impassive and silent. His eyes shake in their usual unsteady tic, too blue to be real, strange and unsettling, but he’s listening. Most of their conversations involve him listening.

“You really fucked things up for me!” Leonor continues. “So many years trying to keep her safe and now we have a diplomatic incident on our hands because of you and your shit husband-”

“’Diplomatic’—what?” Hamal asks. Her tone combined with a reference to Zevran catches his attention, and his expression falls into a half-hearted glare. “I do not understand. What did you say about my husband?”

His Antivan is still not very good. He understands about half of what she says to him, but he knows just enough to be a real pain in the ass when he’s up to the effort of conversing. Frustrated, Leonor reaches into her pockets and produces a letter, written on good parchment, with an ornate seal.

“Who the fuck,” she begins, exasperated, “is writing to you from Orlais?” The paper crumples as she hits it for emphasis, startling him. “The fucking Left Hand of the Divine! Are you serious? How does she know you are here? Why does she even care?”

Hamal’s eyes follow the letter and he seems genuinely taken aback. “I… I do not know-”

“Read it!” She shoves the paper into his hands and takes out a dagger for good measure. “Out loud!”

Hamal glances at the letter, then at her weapon.

“Read!”

“Ya, ya, calma,” he says, unworried. “One moment. Thank you.”

Leonor is no Templar, no guard and no soldier. She watches him read in utter silence, and runs her hand through her curls, giving them a desperate tug. Finally, feeling that she might have been a tad hasty, she puts the knife away.

“Well? What does it say?” she asks.

It says she is overstepping, as usual, Hamal thinks.

Leliana, it seems, has done well for herself since the Blight. Truth be told, he is not too pleased by the letter in his hands. While most would think no news is good news, Leliana has taken it upon herself to spend time and resources tracking them down.

Hamal sighs and closes his eyes, aware of Leonor still watching him. He wishes Zevran was here to discuss this. How troubling.

“She is a friend from Ferelden,” he explains, and tries desperately to think of how to spin this in their favor. He struggles a bit with the next part. “Me ayudó… con… cuando… uhm...”

Waving a hand through the air, he brings it down in a swoop of wings.

“Raar, raar. Demonio. The Archdemon. She helped us end the Blight.”

“The Left Hand of the Divine helped you defeat the Archdemon,” Leonor repeats, and she sinks to the ground in a moody crouch. “Of course. And I suppose she and Zevran are the best of friends.”

“Yes. Friends.” Hamal forms a little twist with his fingers. “Leliana and Zevran. She wants to see us.”

“Then maybe you should go.”

Leonor covers her eyes, mortified. The Divine’s Left Hand! An army of Chantry forces will surely follow. They’ll find a decrepit estate, full of falsified documents, blood magic, assassins, apostates, tax evasion! What will become of Rinnala then, when she is no longer at her side?

Contentious relationship aside, Hamal does sympathize. He knows enough about Leonor to understand that her freedom was hard-won, and that her concerns for Rinnala mirror his own feelings toward Zevran. He steps closer, carefully, and kneels beside her.

“Rinnala does not want us to go,” he says slowly. “She has to decide. Zevran will wait for her to ask him to leave.”

Abruptly, he continues in his native language, something she vaguely recognizes as that curious Coastal Fereldan Elvhen. Different from the way the Antivan Dalish speak.

“I will write Leliana,” he says, holding a palm out and scribbling on it with his finger. “I will tell her we are well and correspond with her accordingly. I will tell her not to come. Que no venga.”

He wags a finger ‘no’.

“Zevran will agree with this plan. No Chantry forces will come to Quinta de Talpa. No Templars will ever chain you again.”

And they’ve squabbled with each other enough in these past months to have built a little bridge all their own. Some understanding, past the language barrier, past the distrust, allows her to grasp his meaning. Leonor puzzles out what he’s saying, unable to believe him, but tempted by the offer.

“Alright… alright,” she says finally. “But we are to read every letter you send. Do not try anything underhanded!”

Hamal nods. “Nothing bad. Promise.”

Leonor scoffs and pulls herself up, grasping him by the shoulder.

“Let’s go. It smells awful. Why are you even out here?”

“There are animals in the orchard,” Hamal says idly. “I was setting traps.”

“Animals?”

“Little ones. They eat the plums. Ah, hm… they go like this.” Unable to describe them, he holds out a hand and makes little motions with his fingers, like a creature scurrying. Then he bunches it up into a fist, as if the creature were curling up.

“Armadillos?” Leonor asks.

Hamal shrugs. A curious moment of peace transpires. The entire conversation has his mind spinning.

“This will work,” he tells her, glancing at her warily, “but not forever. Leliana is not the only one who will come. One day, Rinnala has to let us leave. You promise me.”

“Buddy,” Leonor sighs, “if it were up to me, you would already be gone.”