Homeward
Annie-Lynn had only realized she'd been devouring her fingernails for the past hour when – starting at Sten's heels, tromping forward along an ice-coated Frostback path – sharp dwarf teeth went for another bite and came away empty.
The girl blinked, glanced down at her hands, and was dumbly surprised to find each finger chewed down to a pink, impotent stump. Ridges had been mowed halfway down to their lunulas; cuticles had been ripped away to bare, bleeding patches. 'Huh. Would you look at that?' she wondered, rolling up a fist to exaggerate the damage. Manicures never stood as a high priority on any self-respecting duster's list, of course – hells, hers were broken off most of the time – but this was a bit extreme, even for a Warden. It hadn't hurt, really… well, not enough to curtail the dual-assault of nerves and incisors, at least.
In lieu of any nails, Annie took a fistful of the ridiculous wool scarf Leliana had knitted and stuffed it into her mouth. The dwarf's pupils were the size of coal mines.
Orzammar was three miles off, over a winding dragon's-spine turn, then roughly two-hundred steps away.
Annie-Lynn needn't have asked Morrigan to scry the exact distance for her – she'd committed this long, panting walk to memory like the fastest route from Beraht's den to her latest shadowy hideaway. Good thing, too, because that fork-tongued woman was a witch in more than the literal way. Something about Flemeth's so-called daughter lifted neck hairs; whether it was the wild, snake-red paint elongating both yellow eyes or the seething python apparent in her voice. Alistair, for one, spent his time watching Morrigan with a narrowed look; like a mare warding off stray dogs. (The image fit, too. To picture that hellcat masquerading as a wolf bitch – loping on all fours, neck sloped low between her shoulder blades, weaving in the tall grass just out of arm's reach…)
Well, Annie was plumb afraid of her. Dear old Daveth – rest that lad's tarnished, side-a-ways soul – had been wiser than he'd led on.
Fortunately, our heroine's boots didn't rely on any supernatural guidance as they ploughed on through the mountain trail this morning. As any good dwarf could tell you, magic just made things unnecessarily easy. There was that – and the fact that, in an effort to keep herself from staring up until she dizzily keeled over, Annie-Lynn had spent the first leg of her trek to Ostagar counting paces. Belly-sick as she was (with both agoraphobia and excitement in equal measures), the girl felt her shoulders lighten with every step away from that violent squalor affectionately titled "Dust Town". Nobles might have barked and condemned their weak surface brethren for failing ancient customs… but by the paragons' hairy knees, there was nothing in all Orzammar for a casteless but to escape it. Even the air above ground tasted sweet; every breath so full of oxygen that one began to feel their lungs were filling with sugared water.
Annie closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and spent the next several minutes coughing out the forgotten scarf.
It just didn't seem right – finally breaking free of that god-awful place, only to return with a handful of documents and surfacer pleas.
"Annie-Lynn – are you all right, dear?" Leliana asked, pausing for a moment to place one delicate hand upon her friend's shoulder and take knee. The bard always leveled their height difference when talking to her dwarven companion – a gesture the latter appreciated to no end. Unfortunately, she also insisted on using the youngest Brosca's full name – which normally would not have bothered Annie so, had it not eventually begun sounding more and more like a tease.
The rogue eventually confronted carrot-top about it, too. Leliana earned points when she swore it had nothing to do with mocking, and testified to having only the highest respects for Ferelden's littlest Gray Warden. She them promptly lost them again… unable to resist pointing out that "Annie-Lynn" was simply so darling.
"M'fa s' dun' wrmf," said Annie. Leliana frowned, pulled the spittle-soaked scarf out of her friend's mouth, and waited for clarification. "I said, 'I'm fine, so don't worry,'" the girl managed to choke out, grimacing when the taste of old socks was replaced by brisk highland air. (Thank the Maker they were not Alistair's old socks, though, which reeked to heaven and back thrice over every time he pulled off both heavy battle boots. When Wynne raised sponge-and-bucket in hand with declarations of bathing their troupe's faithful mabari, Annie-Lynn suggested that while she was at it, the mage also ought to douse her senior Gray Warden.) "Branka's buckteeth, what did you knit this thing out of? Dragon fur?" The dwarf stuck out her tongue, proceeding to pluck away several stray tufts of lint.
"Dragons don't have fur, Annie," Alistair chimed in. It was just the appropriate comment to win him a rocky snowball to the back of the head.
"Of course I knew that, ye' great lummox." This lie was mumbled out between irritated scrapes at her back molar. There was a flimsy bit of fabric wedged between two rear teeth, and it utterly refused to budge; clumsy dwarf fingers were making poor work of dislodging the maddening stowaway. Sod it – but Annie sure wished she would've left her poor nails well enough alone. 'Ah, well. Hindsight, and all that.'
The Warden rubbed at his neck, brushing any stray traces of snow off silver puldrons that had long ago fogged over. Chainmail links stiffened into a crunchy sheet beneath them. To tell true, this altitude had their good old boy a bit winded. "Sunshine" – as a mean-spirited Anne-Lynn had taken to calling her lamentably blonde superior (in honor of his remarkable ability to point out snide silver-linings in every instance, including impending darkspawn hordes) – had been huffing and puffing halfway up the mountainside, putting his best soldier foot forward. He'd therefore been forced to squeeze in any sarcastic commentary during group rests, which thus far came few and far between.
This in mind – it seemed oddly fitting that, even when indignant, Alistair's face was nevertheless beet red in the frost-laden wind. "What was that for?" he demanded, bottom lip ripening into a pout. "I'm just saying – they have scales! It's a fact."
"I find your persistent bickering to be most annoying. Is this also a fact?" asked an unmistakable monotone from the path ahead. Sten, shoulders hiked up to his gray and tapered ears, refused to grant them the satisfaction of a scolding glance. Still, Annie could hear the thinly-veiled irritation in his rumbling bass. It was the tone he usually had whenever some pressing matter forced him to speak their leader apparent.
Brosca knew that otherworldly warrior would gladly punt her over the tree-line if he believed it was at all conceivable to get away with such a brazen act. Ever since Annie-Lynn, fed-up, spent an entire evening glowering cross-armed back up at him, she knew any chances there might've been of befriending that big lug had dissolved. No great loss, though. It had given Leliana and Alistair quite the hour of hand-muffled giggles; and, at the very least, might've unnerved her target a tiny bit.
After all this time, the qunari still seemed impossible to like – just as one couldn't cozy up to a brick wall, fond feelings for Sten of the Beresaad were wholly diverted by the unparticular scowl he always wore. And, to be brutally honest (as was Annie's forte)… 'it didn't help much that hulking house of a brute was so bleedin' ugly!' She'd joked once to Alistair that their foreign conscriptee was the result of mating between a tusked boar and a hurlock's backside.
But, as the youngest Brosca found after being whipped in the face with snow for what seemed like an age, he made an excellent wind-shield.
"Are you sure you are feeling well, Annie-Lynn? We can rest if you'd like it," Leliana was saying, fingers tightening warmly on the rogue's shoulder. Her other be-ringed hand set to straightening out the knot of scarf. It was a dreadful, gaudy-looking yellow thing – with pastel blue polka-dots and embroidering that looked like an attempt at flowers – but Brosca didn't quite have it in her to mock the Sister. (Not because of a silly little religious title like 'Sister', of course… but more so because Leliana was reminiscent of Rica in more than a few ways. Flightier and no doubt stranger – yet there remained an intangible hope in both women that hardship failed to extinguish.) "I certainly wouldn't mind, and I'm sure Alistair won't object."
"You can bet your most ridiculous pair of shoes I won't," the Warden shot out, relief dashing through his eyes. "Just a minute, maybe? I've got this… this awful pebble in my boot and it's been gouging me all the way since Soldier's Peak. And, oh – by the way," Alistair added, already balancing poorly against a tree whilst he set to tugging on his iron-clad soles. They had all but suctioned to the man's calves, by now. "You wouldn't happen to have any extra socks on you, Annie? Leliana? No? Well, ah… can we split yours, you think?"
The pleading look on that boy's face nearly cracked Brosca right down her side, had she only been in a better mood. "You want to share socks?" Leliana dared to ask, face scrunching in mild disgust intermixed with horror at this prospect.
"Er… yes," he insisted, preparing an impending whine. ('But a very strong, masculine whine,' or so Alistair had once stated in his defense.) "Mine are sloshy, and… and cold. And I might get frostbite, which means they'll turn all black and stony. And Wynne will have to cut them off, but she won't have the stomach for it – so Zevran will probably be left with the task, and he'd like it too much – and then…"
"Your toes are not going to freeze." Sten severed the forecast of doom and complaints with a gruff snort. "Moisture is actively condensing into snow, which means the temperature is not nearly cold enough here. And walking keeps the blood flowing, not idle rests."
Alistair scowled with righteous fury at the qunari's compassionless back.
"Do not mind them, my friend," Leliana said, clucking her tongue in both males' direction. She wrapped and tied the scarf around Annie's neck again. "If you want to stop for a moment, then we shall."
Sometimes, the dwarf felt as though their bard companion saw her short stature as grounds to start mothering. Then again, that wistful, loopy human had a strange way of spraying saccharine whichever way she turned. Leliana would show a growling genlock assassin with a strip of her oozing hide still in its teeth mercy, if she could only find some way to communicate with the poor monster. Sympathy was simply this woman's nature... yes, even pretty and elf-thin as she was. Rica would heartily approve.
And – albeit that she might cut your tongue out for suggesting so – Annie never said she didn't like a bit of mothering now and then.
(The accent was a bit much, though. Sometimes she, Blondie and Knife-Ears wondered if their romantic Orlesian minstrel was faking it.)
"Nah, no. Honest, I'd rather keep on." The rogue banged both fists together, breathing into them for warmth. She combed a frizzled length of raven hair behind one ear merrily enough. But her eyes were dark, like Aztec jewels; their whites glossed over with a cold, luminous film. "The sooner we get there, aye?"
Leliana tilted her head, sulked a bit at Annie for keeping secrets, then stood up and hiked on.
The girl might not have spilled her pumping heart out onto the white Frostback slush, but she hadn't been lying. For all the dread a duster felt to be tramping back into that hell-hole – for all the anxiety, old pains, all the unforgotten pangs of hunger and poorly-healed broken bones – Orzammar was where Rica was. Orzammar was where Leske sliced purses and charmed himself a harem; Orzammar was where Ma' filled and guzzled her ale cups. Orzammar, damn it all, was where she'd shoved a rusty kitchen knife through Beraht's jugular vein and watched him gasp on the tile like a suffocating carp, taking quiet delights with every spatter of cruor and incomplete scream.
Orzammar – retching, roiling pit that it was; with every inch of unforgiving stone, bad blood, and malice; sprawling, ancient, and malodorous – was home. And Annie-Lynn Brosca would shave her head, strip her armor, and join the bleeding Circle before she'd let some cave tick's blush-wearing bitch scare her out.
'Well, Dust Town – here's hoping you've rolled out the welcome wagon,' she thought, forced a nauseated little grin, and shuffled onwards through the mire.