These drabbles will all focus on Kel and Evin's budding relationship, since they're my Midwinter pairing of choice this year. Prompts are from the Advent Calender at fiefgoldenlake dot proboards dot com. These were formerly part of my "Digging Deeper" set, but since I should end up with 20-30 Kel/Evin based pieces, I wanted to give them a separate story. Sorry for any confusion this caused!
Title: Comfortable Silence
Prompt: Winter
She was standing off to one side, hovering on the edge of the crowd of dancers and smiling faces, a single calm figure amid the whirling shapes and sounds of the ballroom. A small smile played across her face as she watched her friends steal kisses, reunited with the loved ones they had left behind, but the smile was for everyone else, not for herself. Evin wondered if she was as uncomfortable as he was, if she too found the ornate decorations and lavish trays of food glaringly incongruous after months in the field. Didn't they know how many had died, to give them something to celebrate? Suddenly it was too warm, too bright, too crowded, the laughter too loud and careless- he couldn't breathe.
He shivered slightly as he stepped outside, but the cool winter air sobered him quickly as it bit through his thin tunic. Leaning against the paddock fence, he let the familiar scents wash over him, the horse and leather and sweat that was his daily life. The silence of the evening was broken only by the thin crunching of snow beneath light footsteps, a subtle warning that he wasn't the only one enjoying a break from the celebrations. He wondered which of the gilded ladies had been bold enough to follow him and cursed her courage, savoring his last few moments of peace while he waited for the offer, of a dance, a kiss, or a bed to share. But it never came; there was only the slight creak of old wood as the fence bent under added weight. He didn't have to look to know that it was her, searching for the same thing that he was searching for, whatever that was. And as he stood silently in the snow on the longest night of winter, he thanked Mithros that there was someone who could understand.