#fenny brosca

[rennybu]

There’s some strange magic in the rain. She holds out her hands, watches as water pools in her palms. She would have preferred the day but they emerge at night, in the cold and in the dark, gooseflesh on her skin and drops on her eyelashes. Turning her head upwards, and stars blink behind the veil of scattered clouds. There’s no constellations for her tonight, no secret stories written in the heavens. Closing her eyes, feeling the rain splash on her face. Yes, she would have preferred the day but this – she thinks this is what freedom tastes like. - @jawsandbones

a commission of Fenny Brosca for @fairithilien :’-) i’m so astonished that this ended up matching that excerpt as well as it does aaahh

[jawsandbones]

A commission for @fairithilien Thank you for trusting me with your Warden. ❤

There’s some strange magic in the rain. She holds out her hands, watches as water pools in her palms. She would have preferred the day but they emerge at night, in the cold and in the dark, gooseflesh on her skin and drops on her eyelashes. Turning her head upwards, and stars blink behind the veil of scattered clouds. There’s no constellations for her tonight, no secret stories written in the heavens. Closing her eyes, feeling the rain splash on her face. Yes, she would have preferred the day but this – she thinks this is what freedom tastes like.

There’s an older ache in her bones, some hurt she can’t erase. It’s soothed by the sharp scent of pine trees, the biting briskness of the mountain air. Dulled by the rain, and she’s opening her eyes to watch the forked lightning split the sky. Thunder claps in the distance, an echoing rumble in her ribs. Wet soaks her hair, makes stray strands stick to her face, curl at her cheeks. She reaches up, twists a lock between her fingers. It’s gotten so long. That ache, a pang, and her hand drops back to her side.

Leliana is laughing as she runs, water splashing under her feet. Alistair’s teeth chatter, far more miserable than she. He’s a shivering hunk of metal, no armor able to protect him from nature’s less than sweet kiss. Marek smiles as he steps beside her, squeezes a hand on her shoulder. He follows after the other two, and she watches as he herds them like children. She steps off as well, down the stone steps of Orzammar’s entrance, into the mud.

They follow a trail barely seen, hardly used. Twisting off the path, turning into the forest. They’re somewhat protected under a canopy of trees. The sound of rain is lessened here, muffled by leaf and green, landing softly in a blanket of snow. Marek keeps a light lit in his palm, guides their way through. Alistair is groaning as he struggles, while Leliana seems quite indifferent to it all. The camp is easy to spot, as they’ve tied canvas from tree to tree, created a makeshift shelter. Zevran is on watch tonight, greets them as they move to stand underneath it as well.

“You have been underground for some time, my friends,” he says. “Poor luck that you’ve come back on such a miserable night.” There are tents cramped together in that clearing, a fire struggling to burn at its center. At the sound of voices, Wynne is immediately opening her tent and going to them. Hands on their faces, turning their heads back and forth. There’s magic in her touch, searching for a hurt to heal.

“She ate something weird again,” Alistair says as he points a thumb over his shoulder, right at Fenny. The frown is a twitch on Wynne’s brow.

“It wasn’t weird, just poisonous,” Leliana tells Wynne, “fly agaric.”

“Again?” Wynne sighs. Her hands are warm on Fenny’s face, her magic a fire that warms her from the inside out. “You really shouldn’t.” A most gentle scolding. Fenny gives her a grin, wraps hands around Wynne’s wrists.

“I’m fine,” she says. “You know it’s not poisonous to me.” Another twitch of a frown.

“I’m sure.” Wynne still worries.

Alistair shrugs out of his armor faster than he ever had before. Taking the blanket Zevran passes to him, diving into his tent. Leliana is humming as she sits by the fire, a blanket around her shoulders as well, hands by the fire. Marek has his eyes closed as he sits, leans against a tree, his staff resting in his hands. She sits very near him, watches as rain runs the maze of the bark. It’s almost like how it was in Dust Town, in the darkest parts. Water would sweat on stone, drip and drop, pool onto the ground. She’d seen more than one beggar sleep in those spots, not having anywhere else to go.

The rain falters with the sun, and it all seems to shine even brighter in the morning light. She rubs sleep from her eyes, having barely slept at all. It came in fitful spurts, seemed to elude her. She wakes before the others, runs a hand over her head. Fingers thread through now dry hair, and she tugs at a strand. It’s all too familiar. Another pang, a memory she struggles with. Kalah would never understand what she had done. Fenny pushes herself up from the bedroll, lets her hands drop to her lap. Finger locks with finger, and she squeezes until knuckles turn white. It isn’t fair.

She will miss the songs Leliana sang as she weaved the smallest, the most delicate, braids. She will miss the way Zevran would pickpocket every clip he could find, stick it in her hair. She will miss so much, but maybe it will hurt less.

She slips from the camp, safely out of everyone’s notice. The snow crunches under her every step and she taps at the hanging icicles. Such a simple touch shakes snow from trees, and drops of water lingers on her finger. She finds the river that runs near to the camp, half frozen with the ice like glass. Kneeling down in the snow, and already her knees are patches of wet, evidence of her actions. Leaning over, and she can see her reflection in that ice. It wavers from the flow of water beneath it, but it’s good enough. It will do. She reaches for the small knife on her belt.

It’s more difficult than she thought it would be. She tugs at each lock the same way Kalah used to, a fistful of hair. The metal flashes in the sunlight, the knife slices through each strand. The cut is cruel, the cut is kind, and wisps of hair float downwards. Cut after cut, strand after strand. It piles beneath her, and she’s biting her bottom lip. It’s control, of herself, a way for others to never take advantage of her again. Hair falls and Kalah’s voice echoes a little less, Dust Town isn’t quite so painful, the stares of the higher class dwarves not so hurtful.

She runs a hand over her head, feels that rough scratching of stubble against her palm. She tucks the knife back into her belt. She reaches out, breaks the ice. Her hair is taken with the current, washed away, never to be seen again. She stands, brushes snow from her clothes. A bluebird sits up in a tree, cocks its head at her. Chirping its song, wings flapping as it flies away. Fenny heads back to camp.

Marek blinks when he sees her. Whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t say it. He only smiles, rubs his hand on her hair. “You missed a spot,” he says as he puts a hand on her back, “let me help you.” She sits on the ground while he kneels behind her. She closes her eyes and how is it so different from when she did it? The lightest touch, the kindest knife, his hands running over her head again and again, until he deems it complete. He moves to sit beside her, crosses his legs, and rests an elbow on each knee. Looking over at her, and he smiles again. She smiles back.

“You’re alright,” he tells her.

The rest of them are slowly waking, specters of themselves. Lightest chatter, some teasing from Morrigan. Alistair’s hair is stuck upwards like a duck, while Leliana’s is messed about her head. Somehow Zevran’s is still impeccable, while Wynne keeps that neat knot, lets no stray strand escape. Sten might still be asleep even as he stands with his arms crossed, an unmoving statue. Oghren practically rolls out of his tent, already gulping down whatever foul mixture he keeps in his flask.

Fenny bites back the laugh as she watches her friends. She is glad to have left Orzammar when she did. The right time, the right place, the right people. She wouldn’t have it any other way. She politely and affectionately taps Marek’s knee. “I am,” she says.

[himb0i]

from deep roots and subtle seeds

fenny! a portrait in the experimental texturey style of my petra piece for @fairithilien in exchange for some Rocks, etc

[shaperoforzammar]

“Being untouchable”

Eliza Cadash has a big, silly crush in Dust Town. The wonderful Fenny Brosca belongs to @fairithilien . Thank you for sharing her with us, both me and Eliza love her. Happy birthday!! <3 (slight warning for gore)

Eliza remembers being just a child - of fear, of flesh, of nothing, of anything but Stone, she used to tell herself- buried in the tunnels of Orzammar. In those awkward years when she was sprouting into adolescence, she was stretched in all sorts of uncomfortable proportions: large ears and long arms, a smile too large for her face.

Her thick brown hair was pulled into a curtain of dozens of braids that framed a timid, dirty face. It was something of a ritual in her family, where they would braid each others’ hair. A middle child, she had only ever had responsibility over her youngest brother, but took her turn at feeling small sitting at the feet of her oldest sister.

One day, at the age of nine or ten - the years in Dust Town blur - her sister had been caught in a moment of equipment failure in the tunnels. Her hand had been crushed in a pulley, her fingers miraculously still attached but bent out of shape. Eliza, one of the carta’s smallest runners, had been much further down, spelunking in a claustrophobic cave where the light of a sole torch exaggerated shadows on the walls. But she heard her sister’s screams.

Days later, the screams were still echoing in her head, ricocheting inside of her skull. Her sister’s hand would never recover, wrapped in strips of cloth that her mother had torn from her tunic, the room, packed with family members eerily silent. For the first time, Eliza had sat down, her sister on the floor between the curve of her legs, and took the older woman’s darker hair into her fingers and wrapped a strand of it around them playfully. When her sister complained about her tugging too tight, she offered a teasing remark about about how all of her life had been. It didn’t land well, and she grit her jaw to swallow down the numb that worked its way into her bones.

Immediately after she was done, Eiza bolted outside, into the dim corridors of Dust Town. Stumbling as she did, gasping dramatically for breath caused a few heads to turn. They were all opportunists, gang members and the devastated alike, looking for fresh prey. She raised the scratchy tan of her tunic, stained repeatedly from various substances, over the waistline of her pants to reveal a dagger strapped to her hip. They immediately turned back to whatever they had previously feigned interest in.

She was thankful she didn’t have to fight. Her heart wasn’t in it today, and this was her last good tunic left. Not knowing where to go, she took a sharp turn and began heading somewhere, the small corner of Orzammar that was Dust Town hardly something new to explore. Part of her wanted to go run through the Diamond Quarter just to see the rich stone-kissers squirm at the sight of her. Maybe she could spit in their drink. They’d surely die from the shame of it alone.

She almost laughed at that, kicking up dirt as she walked past the tavern where drunkards hollered, their distorted voices echoing in the cavernous ceilings. She wondered if the drunken laughter of the Diamond Quarter elite sounded as much like the howls of a darkspawn in the dark. Pausing for a moment, she rested on the step of an abandoned ruin, exchanged by various different businesses over the years but empty at the moment.Leaning her head against the faded white stone, turning brownish yellow with decay, she looked at the stalactites that speared down towards them from far above as the ceiling vaulted to an apex above the Commons, further backing them into a corner.

Nah, those snobs would laugh like the squeals of a dying nug.

A trail of footsteps jerked her instinctively out of her thoughts, one hand instinctively reaching for her waistband as her head snapped upwards. And when she saw who was walking by, she sunk lower down the wall, as if willing herself to disappear in case she could glance over.

She wasn’t sure the older girl knew she existed, and if she did it would be for the time she had dropped an entire crate of freshly mined lyrium ore and, in her blubbering, had begun picking up the pieces with her bare hands. That had been nearly a year before, the first time Eliza could remember seeing the older girl, and had been so stunned it struck her silly. The emotions and urges of adolescence had not so much snuck up on her as slammed her over the head. A furious blush crept up her cheeks at the memory of the events, and she buried her face in her hands.

Every time she saw the woman, it was as if she got more beautiful. Eliza scooted further down the wall, until she was nearly laying flat on her back. How could everyone else not react in a similar fashion, she wondered. Brosca, someone else in the carta had called her. Her older siblings had talked of her approvingly once as Eliza listened in, pretending to be disinterested as her heart pounded loudly in her ears.

Brosca had broad shoulders, sturdy, and even through her armor the outline of her muscles was clearly defined. Her legs were especially astonishing, exerting great power with every stride through the dirty streets. Each step seemed powerful. She glistened through a layer of dirt and sweat, the majesty of the statues of the damned Paragons pulled into flesh and breathing before her.

Climbing out from under her collar and dotting the tan skin of her face was a scattering of freckles, like she had ground a deep amber into dust and blown it across her form. Some of the older dusters, bent into the corners they had been forced into, had told her stories growing up of the great big sky on the surface, and how it regularly got dark and patterned with lights the humans called stars. Eliza imagined it looked something like Brosca’s freckles.

Though she hardly ever met eye contact with anyone from what Eliza had noticed - and Eliza noticed a lot where Brosca was concerned - the one time she had seen her eyes had been stunning. Deep brown, but with a flare to them, like the flash of a forge when a sword was being willed into being at the brunt of a hammer. They were framed by stern, arching brows. Though dark, the hair that grew, incredibly short, on the top of her head was an even darker color. Eliza still remembered her awe that a woman could have so little care for her hair and be so beautiful. That it cut the lines of her face into sharp relief. It was a bold choice, and one that made her jaw drop.

Maker, she had it bad. As Brosca left her frame of view, Eliza found that she was propping herself up on her elbows, not wanting to lose sight of her. Her braids fell into her face, and for the first time that day, she felt like laughing. In fact, she almost felt a little bit brave.

Standing up with a hop, she followed the direction Brosca went, a spring to her step. “Hey, what’s shaping?” she called, voice cracking embarrassingly. A couple thieves in cracked leather armor walked in front of her, and she pushed impatiently past them. Bouncing after Brosca again, Eliza wondered if she should appear casual, maybe ask her about her about the day, any gossip, how the carta was going…

How the carta was going?

Slamming her face into her hands, she groaned, exaggeratedly. Following her further into the dilapidated city, Eliza wondered what kind of things Brosca would seek out to buy, or who she would spend her downtime with. She seemed to walk with a steely determination, as if a new rage had overtaken her.

And it had, as the older woman appeared to be on a warpath towards a man with blunt, almost smeared looking tattoos on his face. Ducking behind a crumbling pillar to watch, Eliza saw that the man was crooning over a woman with fiery red hair pulled up into what were clearly very practiced buns made of smaller braids.  She had seen Brosca with that woman a lot, and had deduced that they were sisters. The redhead was scowling, batting away the man’s hands. He seemed annoyed at her rebellion, and with a yellowing grin snaked his hand up her neck and tugged at the knots of her hair. With a shriek, some strands of the red fell free not just from the buns but from her head.

Hands balling into fists, Eliza wanted to leap out of her cover and launch all of her too-small body at the man who was likely double her weight due to muscle alone. But she froze as Brosca instead grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it behind his back. His ghoulish face contorted in pain as a sickly pop came from his shoulder. He moaned in agony as the arm hung at a strange angle, still trapped in the form of his armor. Eliza’s jaw dropped.

Brosca growled something that she couldn’t make out and dragged him to his knees, pushing his head into the dirt. The man was wailing pathetically now, and Brosca couldn’t pay him any notice. She turned immediately to the redhead, who looked as pale as a newborn nug, tears welling in her eyes. Breathing fast from both anxiety and relief, Eliza raised a hand to her chest, wanting to be that bold for her own sister, for anyone who deserved it. She watched, feeling like she was intruding on something deeply private, as Brosca cupped her sister’s face in her hands, and drew their foreheads together for the briefest of moments. It was such a fleeting and unsuspected moment of gentleness that Eliza gasped in awe, then ducked behind the pillar and sunk towards the ground again, hands spread out in the dust.

A few minutes passed before Eliza could compose herself enough to peak out. Brosca was completely stoic again, across the square as she seemed deep in negotiation with a trader. Her sister appeared to have left, and she hoped it was to somewhere safe, if such a thing existed in Dust Town.

When Brosca left, unceremoniously turning on her heel back towards the “neighborhood,” Eliza couldn’t help but trail behind her, wanting to return to her own home as well. The older girl plowed through the crowds of tired, broken bodies expertly as Eliza struggled to keep her in sight. Leaping forward at one point to avoid being trampled, she instead found her footing confused by the uneven levels of the dirt. She fell hard on her hands, wrists already aching as she let out a small shout.

The sound of it was enough that Brosca turned around quickly, hand straying to her own blade.

Eliza froze at the girl’s gaze, unsure of what to do. Was there recognition in her eyes? She couldn’t tell. They were thrillingly unreadable. “Hi!” She shouted finally, just as Brosca started to turn back around. “I don’t know if you know me, but, uh, I just wanted to say…” she trailed off in a panicked hush. What did she want to say? What was her objective here? “You...are so...you’re very strong!”

Brosca raised an eyebrow, and Eliza was shocked to see in the girl’s face a trace of amusement. The blush returned to her cheeks and she was sure she was more red than hurlock blood.

“I just…it’s, I...” She looked at the ground, at a trader whose worn down wares were laid out on a tarp behind Brosca, anywhere but at her face, and then said loudly “THOUGHT THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW!” Eyes growing wide, she forced her voice down and whispered, “because, you know, it feels...good. To know how you’re, just, the absolute best of the vein.”

Oh, she was on loose sand now. Hopefully it would just swallow her up, and then she could join the stone like all the elites said she couldn’t do. “BYE!”

Eliza stood there awkwardly for another second, painfully aware of how many eyes were on her. Sod it, she thought, and took off running, tripping over her own feet again as she urged herself out of there. If the stone didn’t take her, maybe she could claw to the surface and fall into the sky. The stars wouldn’t know about how embarrassing Eliza was around pretty women.

Turning corners instinctively, Eliza quickly fell into her own house, breathing hard as she collapsed against the door of rotting wood. Just her luck, every single member of her family was inside, and turned to look at her, clothes dirty-stained and eyes wild with excitement as she let out an excited giggle.

Her younger brother threw a ball composed of flexible tubers gathered by her in the side tunnels straight at her face. Eliza couldn’t stop grinning even as it hit its target and bounced off of her cheek. Her mother and father laughed and her brother jeered. Sitting in the far corner, her oldest sister sat, nursing her injured hand, but still smiling. Finally, Eliza was able to look at her and admire the dark black braids her fingers had sewn, and had been tied into a bun on top of her head since she had left.

“She only has that face when she’s seen Fenny Brosca,” her older brother jeered. The whole family erupted into laughter. It made the small, confined, roughly hewn walls of their home feel fuller, softer.

“Her name is the Paragon of Beauty!” Eliza said, playing into the jokes, but not giving them the satisfaction of knowing that that was how she learned Brosca’s first name. If she couldn’t stop it, she thought, she might as well have a good time with it.

“What do you know about beauty?” her brother joked.

“More than you do,” her mother cut in, drawing a gasp from around the room.

The banter carried on, light hearted and teasing. Eliza wondered, looking at the crowded room of everyone she was related to, what kind of home Fenny returned to. The redhead seemed to be the only sister, or sibling at all, that Eliza had ever seen her with, and she didn’t know anything about her parents. She hoped that that girl had laughter in her life, though the hard line of her mouth seemed to hint that she did not.

Sitting on the floor, sweeped clean by someone in her family, she pulled her youngest sister, face still rounded like a baby, into her lap. Her hair was not braided, and she wore the dark brown curls like a small crown. Burying her face in her sister’s hair, Eliza whispered, “You listen close, okay, Kata? This might be the most important thing you can learn. And I’ll tell this to you your whole life.”

She breathed deeply, amazed at how fresh and clean the small child smelled. “Don’t let anyone touch you. Don’t let anyone ever make you theirs. And if someone tries to, Eliza’s gonna make ‘em eat dirt.” She absentmindedly drew her hands to her own head and ran a hand through her braids, and found herself humming a lilting tune, rocking back and forth to draw giggles from her squealing sister.

[linliness]

surana and brosca commission for @fairithilien!! two grinning goofs who are in loooove

[hyperionwitch-art]

Day 2!  Definitely feeling more comfortable with my brush now.  This is @fairithilien‘s Fenny Brosca!  I loved the way she was described to me, she sounds so interesting and well-written.  I hope I did her justice!

Three Inktober slots left!  Click here for info on that jazz.

[blackberreh-art]

Fenny Brosca for @ithilienwrites ;D

[actualarishok]

What Magic Feels Like

This is a 1.5k word drabble for my dear friend @fairithilien about our Wardens, Marek Surana (mine) and Fenny Brosca (hers). It’s cute and sweet and if you like it you can commission one like it or something totally different from me! Enjoy!

“Marek?”

“Yes?”

“What does magic feel like?”

Instantly, his mind brought a thousand answers forth, but his tongue was still and unsure. Magic felt like warmth in his veins, like the sudden sharpening of all your senses at once, like the feeling of strong hands gripping slender shoulders or those same hands defending one mage and attacking another-

No. None of those were right.

“Magic…feels good.” He was lame. He had no simple answer.

Predictably, Fenny puffed her cheeks at him in a pout. “All right, smartass. Can I get a real answer?”

He could feel a flush rise to cheeks mismatched thanks to a nasty scar, and quickly dropped his gaze to the fire pit burning before them both.

“Magic…feels like this.” He reached, and his hand took her own. He pressed his other hand to the back of Fenny’s, bringing her palm to his own chest as his eyes slid up to look at her himself. It feels like the way you look when you smile, he thought silently. He let energy flow, thrumming the electricity between both his hands. He knew it would, mostly, slide off her like water from a duck’s back, but the bits that remained would tingle warmly like it did for him.

After a moment he released her, slow and soft as he waited for a reaction. She looked down at her hands, then up at his face, and his heart fluttered as her eyes met his own. His cheeks flushed.

“…Well?”

She smiled at him and he was certain she would be able to see the tips of his ears turning pink.

“Is that how you feel all the time?”

“Only when I use my magic,” he lied. “Yes,” his brain supplied, his thoughts drawn to the warm feeling in his chest when he went to wake Fenny for her watch, or the way his stomach fluttered when she laughed at his sarcastic jokes.

He loved her and he’d never tell her, because they might die, because the thought of losing her made his soul cry out in protest. He loved her eyes, the way the beautiful brown and gold brightened his mornings and soothed his nightmares. He loved her.

He could never, ever tell her. “It took some getting used to.”

“Ha! I bet.” She grinned at him and turned to the fire, prodding at the tubers roasting in the flames with a stick. They smelled delicious, familiar. Like home.

When had this scrappy, tough little dwarf and her improvised cooking become home?

Home had been the Circle with its heavy rugs, soft robes, bland food and watchful Templars, but he felt more endeared towards the dwarf he’d known for a few months than he did towards the people in the tower he was raised in. Home was calloused working hands, wide shoulders, close-shaven hair and a casteless tattoo. Home was worn leathers, sharp knives, and sharper wit.

Home was Fenny, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Marek reached back to pet Bacon, the dog whuffing at his sleeve and licking his hand before letting him return it to his lap, the slight clink of an enchanted ring on scale maille just another quiet noise in the camp that, though it was never in the same place twice, he called home.

Marek would curl up in his bedroll tonight wanting to ask Fenny to join him, if only so that he could keep laughing. It was so much easier to live every day with her nearby-without her, his thoughts drifted to darkness. Without her his dreams were filled with Darkspawn and nightmarish demons.

Without her, he was weak.

Marek rolled his head from side to side, feeling satisfying pops in his stiff neck as Fenny stabbed a tuber. “Smells like I’m going to have to give it to Bacon and Eggs,” he teased.

Fenny’s own dog audibly gave an excited whine; he was always hungry. Bacon himself let out a disbelieving huff behind him, and Fenny laughed.

“Don’t be rude or I’ll eat your tuber as well as my own, pretty boy.”

He blushed dark again, eyes widening a touch. Every time she called him that his heart nearabout leapt from his throat, and he barely recovered in time. “Eat my dinner and I’ll shrink your boots a size.”

“Then I’ll do what the elves do and go without!”

He looked down at his bare dirty toes and sighed. “You’ll get hurt, you’re not made to go barefoot.”

“Try me!”

“I will not touch your boots.”

“That’s more like it,” she said cheerfully and with a grin.

Marek desperately wished to tell her he loved her, again and again and again.

“Fenny?”

“Yeah? Here, it’s hot.” She held out a stick with a speared tuber on it. “Hold this while I go see if Alistair is hoarding all our cheese!”

“Oh, uhm, go get the cheese first. I can wait.”

She trotted over to Alistair’s pack, the human already sleeping in his own bedroll complete with loud snores, and squatted to dig through it.

“Just tell her,” the spirit inside him murmured. “I’m curious how it will go.”

“You’re curiosity itself, you can survive,” he bit back silently. “I can’t.”

“You’re being a lovesick coward, Marek.”

“No. I’m protecting her.”

“She protects you.”

He pursed his lips. “I must protect her from anything I can. If all I can keep from her is inevitable heartbreak, so be it.”

“What happened to your thirst for knowledge, boy?”

“It’s hidden by my sense of self-preservation.”

Before he could make sense of the spirit’s reply, a tap on his head tore him from his thoughts with an undignified yip.

“Fenny to Marek! Marek! Anyone home?”

He looked up at her from his position on the ground. “Sorry. I got…lost in my own thoughts.”

“Dingus. I found the cheese-Alistair is such a liar, he said he ate this cheddar already.”

“Cheese-hoarder.”

“It could be worse, remember the sausages Eggs stole from that shop?”

He rolled his eyes, glancing to the mabari now licking itself. Dignified. “And we had to pay a full gold piece to make up for everything he and Bacon ate? How could I forget.”

“Don’t sound so droll,” she snorted, slicing the cheddar in her hand with quick movements. He took the proffered slice. “You were laughing just as much as me at the shopkeeper’s face!”

“Yes, and then he questioned where an elf got a gold piece and you decked him.”

Fenny busted up into snickers as she tried to stuff cheese inside her hot tuber without burning herself, and Marek felt that curious burning again as he wondered what she’d do if he told her.

Would she laugh? Would it be even more beautiful than every laugh before?

Would her eyes light up, her lips quirk into a smile, her eyes crinkle with happiness or mirth?

He squashed the curiosity like a bug beneath his foot as he pulled his belt knife to slice into the tuber. Steam puffed out when he punctured the crispy skin, and he stuffed his cheese into it without looking, fixated on Fenny’s face as she shoved tuber and cheese into her mouth.

Maker, if she was still adorable with her face full of food, he was definitely done for.

He was more delicate with his food, a fastidious habit left over from Circle table manners, but he laughed when a drop of melting cheese started to dangle precariously from her tuber. Before he could blink, he reached out to scoop up the cheese droplet with one thin finger, and deposited it on her bottom lip just shy of her mouth.

She froze, and so did he, and then-

She licked the cheese off her lip, said “Dork,” and took another bite.

Marek started to laugh, shaking his head. “Eat slower. There’s plenty, you know there is.”

“Force of habit,” came Fenny’s reply through a mouthful of mostly cheese. “You know that.”

“Mmm. This is why Eggs and Bacon love you, they get to consume dropped crumbs.”

Bacon whined at him. “You do too, Bacon,” Marek retorted softly.

“Woof!”

“Shhh, Alistair’s sleeping.”

Fenny snorted. “He sleeps like a rock. Trust me, I’m a dwarf.”

“Yes you are. I figured that out when I realized you were shorter than me.”

She tugged one of his ears and he swatted at her with no real venom behind it, smirking.

“Rude!”

“But I’m right.”

“I’m gonna dump you in a river.”

“I’d love that,” Marek smirked. Fenny paused, snorted at him, and then let out a yawn so big that Marek was sure he heard her jaw crack.

“Fenny, I’ll take first watch.”

“Are you sure? You did have to do a lot of magic today…”

He shook his head at her with a smile. “I’m not as tired as I thought I’d be. You go ahead.”

“Mmm’kay. Nightie night.”

“Goodnight, Fenny.”

As she turned for her bedroll, Marek solidly planted his gaze on the fire until he heard soft snoring.

He loved her, and he would rather die than forget.

Marek Surana committed the sound of Fenny Brosca’s gentle snoring to memory, and wondered if she dreamed.

And then, as the moon rose round overhead, he answered her question aloud.

“Magic feels like you.”

[erandir]

fairithilien replied to your post “OC fact swap! My Warden Brosca has pretty severe claustrophobia.”

Poor bud. I can picture that being a freaky transition. And yeah. Fenny was trapped in a cave in when she was 10- her best friend died in it. She blocked out the memory but being on the surface a while and the warden nightmares caused the buried memories to resurface and it manifested in claustrophobia.

It’s definitely a bit of a shock to go from being a life-long shut-in to living on the road.

But wow, that’s rough. I can’t imagine how much worse returning to Orzamar and going into the deep roads would have been while dealing with something like that.

[rennybu]

fenny: *kiss* bryony: *overjoyed battle yell*

(fenny is @fairithilien ‘s!! i love these brosca girls so much!!!!!!!!)