AN: Solas drabbles strike again! I've got such a crush! Send Help.
Rated T: pretty safe, but there are hints about sexy things?
Disclaimer: I think it is pretty clear that Bioware owns me and I own nothing.
"No," Solas heard the elven woman that the humans had recently named 'Herald of Andraste' snap mulishly as he led the old gray mare they'd given him towards the front of Haven's stables. "No no no no no. Absolutely not. Not for all the hideous hats in Orlais. Not for a million sovereigns. No."
"You're being inexplicably unreasonable about this," came the voice of Commander Cullen, whose patience was obviously beginning to wear thin. "It's just a horse."
"That thing is not a horse," Aili Lavellan replied stubbornly. "It's an ogre with its horns sawed off."
The Commander heaved a grating sigh as Solas came out of the stables and rounded the corner to see what all the fuss was about. Varric was holding the lead of a plump cream-colored pony and looking all too entertained by the scene before him. The little Dalish woman with the fated mark on her hand was in the middle of a stand-off with Cullen, crossing her arms tightly across her chest and flat-out refusing to take the reins of the enormous black draft horse the former templar was trying to offer her. The animal stamped its foot and gave and angry snort, its dark eyes rolling back in its head as it pinned its ears back in displeasure. Solas wasn't entirely sure he blamed the Herald for having misgivings; the beast was rather…daunting.
"I think I'd rather walk," the elven woman said with a scowl.
"The journey to the Hinterlands from Haven takes nearly three weeks on foot," Cullen reminded her with a roll of his eyes.
"At least I know I'd be alive when I got there," came the retort.
"I thought the Dalish tamed wild beasts and rode them places all the time?" Varric said with a clearly amused grin.
"We ride halla," Aili corrected him with a groan of frustration, "and we don't tame them. They come to us willingly."
"Well, there's plenty of woods around here," Varric pointed out helpfully, making a broad sweeping gesture with his arms. "You could always stand out in the snow until a halla turns up, if you don't want to ride the horse."
"And you could go stand in a cave and see how long it takes for the Stone to start talking to you," she shot back.
"I could, but Cassandra would miss me," he laughed.
"I'm sure I would find some way to survive the deprivation," the Seeker's voice cut through the crisp morning air as she came riding up on a gleaming white charger. "What seems to be the trouble here, Commander?"
"The Herald is…displeased with our selection of mounts," the former templar informed her with a distinct air of one who has been severely put upon. Cassandra studied the steed intended for the Herald for a few moments before turning to the elven woman with a puzzled frown.
"I see nothing wrong with the horse. What is your problem with it?" she queried.
"You mean outside of the fact that it looks like it could breathe fire?" the Dalish elf asked grouchily. She twisted her hands together before mumbling, "I'm…allergic."
Solas gave a huff of disbelieving laughter, only to have Aili look over and scowl at the sleepy-looking steed they'd given him to ride.
"How come Solas gets a normal horse?" Lavellan demanded peevishly, pointing an accusing finger at him.
"I think the word 'normal' is a bit generous," he informed her with a smirk. "This mare has seen a few too many winters. She may be docile, but if we needed to flee from some imminent danger, I'm afraid I would be the first one to get caught."
"I'd rather be slow than try to cling to the back of that monster as it goes tearing through the countryside," she grumbled.
"You are also the Herald of Andraste," Solas reminded her, "and a certain amount of posturing is necessary."
"Until you contact Horse Master Dennet, I'm afraid our choice of mounts is rather limited," Cullen said apologetically. "Moonbeam might have a sweeter disposition, but she also looks a bit…bedraggled. I don't think she'd make the right impression."
"It wouldn't say much about the Inquisition if the Herald of Andraste came riding into town on a worn-out nag," Varric explained.
"It would say that the Herald values her own life more than winning hearts and minds," Aili muttered sourly. "The horse you gave Cassandra doesn't seem like it just escaped from the Void, why can't I ride that one?"
"Valora is my horse," the Seeker said stiffly. "I trained her myself. She has never borne another rider, and she has thrown the few who have tried."
"You know what they say about pets resembling their owners," Varric commented blithely. Cassandra glowered at him.
"All right, all right, I'll ride your blighted beast of a horse," Aili sighed in resignation, throwing her hands up in surrender. "What's his name?"
"Uh…Horse?" Cullen shrugged. "He was found grazing in an abandoned farmhold a few days ago. Nobody has tried to ride him yet, let alone bothered to name him."
"Well, this just keeps getting better and better," the Dalish woman muttered darkly. Privately, Solas agreed. The fact that peasants fleeing for their lives didn't take a strong plow horse with them to carry their belongings did not speak well of the animal's temper. "Someone come here and give me a leg up."
Cullen was not only the closest and the only one with two free hands, but he also seemed extremely eager to have this business over with. Or, Solas thought, perhaps the man simply had an appreciation for a pair of lean elven thighs. He could hardly hold that against him.
Even with the Commander's assistance, Aili was having an extraordinarily difficult time getting enough leverage to swing her leg over the horse's back. The beast was almost impossibly tall and had little to no interest in standing still long enough to be mounted. After three failed attempts, one of which ended with the Herald of Andraste falling backwards and almost toppling head over heels over the Commander's shoulder, Cullen practically threw Aili into the saddle. The poor man had been forced to lay hands on the elven woman in a rather intimate way in order to keep her from repeatedly tumbling into the snow, and the mortification of publicly doing something that might be perceived as crass had left his face as red as his fur trimmed coat.
"There," Cullen bit out gruffly, "nothing to worry about, as I said." Aili dug her fingers into the horse's thick ebony mane and peered down at the human apprehensively.
"How am I supposed to get down?" she asked with a hint of fear.
"Carefully," Solas suggested.
"By leaping into the arms of a waiting prince?" Varric offered.
"Well, you're the only prince I know, Va-ah-ah-CHOO!" Her sentence ended with a violent sneeze, and the horse bucked fiercely at the sudden noise. The Herald of Andraste shrieked in equal parts terror and alarm as she flew over the beast's head and mercifully landed in a nearby pile of hay.
When she sat up, completely disheveled with bits of hay sticking out of her hair and clothing, seething but clearly unhurt, it was impossible not to laugh at her expense. Varric was practically in tears. Solas was moments away from offering her his horse after all when she rose to her feet and started cursing.
"Fen'harel's hairy left butt-cheek!" she exclaimed vehemently as she stomped over to face her nemesis. She grabbed its bridle and glared. "You're an evil creature." The horse gave an angry snort in reply and attempted to snap at her hands.
Solas felt the smile slide from his face. The muscles in his insulted posterior flexed in offence. If she was going to curse his old name every time her steed was ill-tempered, it was going to make the next few weeks of travelling together trying, to say the least.
"I will break you," she informed the horse crossly before breaking out into another fit of sneezes. Solas sighed.
As predicted, their journey was filled with bouts of frenzied sneezing followed by irritated kicking followed by streams of cursing and invoking the Dread Wolf by turns. For his part, Solas was rather torn between amusement, aggravation, and a fair share of confusion in regards to the Dalish woman. She would spend an entire day unwittingly screaming in both Elvhen and Common about the various ways his genitals were inadequate, and otherwise generally badmouthing every inch of his person, and while the rational part of him knew that it wasn't really directed at him, it was hard to completely disassociate himself from a name he had been called for centuries. The onslaught of defamations had left him…irritable, to say the least. But then, just when he thought he had taken as much abuse as he could tolerate and was about to storm off somewhere to cool his head, they'd stop to set up their modest campsite and Aili would instantly be at his side, all smiles and jokes and excited questions.
He imagined that she clung to his companionship largely because he was both a fellow elf and a mage. She was understandably still a bit wary of Cassandra, and though it was clear she liked Varric, she most likely didn't know just how far she trusted him yet. 'Solas' however, was quiet and unassuming, full of stories about magic and battles and lost kingdoms, and spoke the dying language of her race with a grace and fluidity she had likely never encountered; it was only natural that she would look to him first and foremost as an ally. The irony of her blind faith in his protection was not lost on him. Even so, when she blinked up at him with those intelligent amethyst eyes and grilled him for more details about something he had seen in the Fade, or certain properties of spell casting, or the way he pronounced a word in Elvhen, he found her sincere and unwavering interest…endearing. And it was beyond his power to stay mad at her for long.
The Hinterlands were a mess. Cassandra, Varric, and Solas were often allowed a day of respite, but every scout, refugee, farmer, and cultist in the area seemed to require the particular attention of the 'Herald of Andraste'. Aili was up at the crack of dawn every day, clambering into the saddle of her gigantic mount half asleep and riding out to meet with the unwashed masses. Every evening she rode back into camp looking like she'd fallen down a mountainside, stumbling over to the campfire and collapsing into an exhausted slump on one of the logs surrounding it. Solas had taken to waiting up for her, saving her a portion of whatever had been made for dinner.
"Ma Serannas," she groaned, taking a bowl of stew from his outstretched hand. "Between making nice with the locals and trying to break in Fen'Harel, I'm not sure I could have made it another step."
Solas nearly spat out the water he'd been sipping.
"You named the horse Fen'Harel?" he sputtered.
"It seemed appropriate," the blonde elf shrugged. "He's menacing, wicked, and frighteningly smart. I hoped that if I named him after the Dread Wolf, maybe the old trickster would show up and eat him." There was a distant whinny of indignation. Solas blinked in surprise, but Aili simply grimaced. "See what I mean? He knows when people talk about him. Creepy."
The younger elf moaned piteously as she slid off the log onto the ground, rubbing her hands over her legs. "I've been riding Fen'Harel every day...we didn't even ride halla this often, and that horse is simply too big to be allowed. My thighs are killing me. Have you ever ridden a halla, Solas? You pretty much just sit there and let it take you someplace. Riding a horse takes work. Especially a stubborn one like Fen'Harel. I constantly have to guide him, gripping with my knees just so he doesn't toss me into a ditch every time he decides he wants to get rid of me. And when he breaks into a trot I keep bouncing up and down in the saddle. Honestly, the only thing that hurts more than my legs is my a- Solas?"
"I think I should retire for the evening," he told her in a strangled voice.
"Are you blushing?" she asked, clearly amused.
"...no." When he finished knotting the ties of his tent flaps together, he could still hear her laughing.