Feynriel woke. It was warm in bed, with the layers of sheets and blankets over him, the thickly-stuffed straw tick under him. The fire was down to little more than a few last coals in a bed of ashes; the window thick with frost. It would be a while yet until the sun rose, he knew, but the pressure in his bladder told him it was time to get up and go make breakfast. So he sat up, pushing the bedding aside, and rose. The floor was cold, but he ignored that as he made his bed, stripped off his night clothes, and dressed. He went into the bathing chamber and used the earth closet there, sprinkling in a scoop of ashes when he was done, washed his hands – he had to break the skim of ice in the pitcher to do so – then headed off to the kitchen.

It was very cold in the kitchen, the fire having gone out entirely some time in the night, cold drafts finding their way in around the edges of the door and the two windows. He cleaned out the ashes, and laid a new fire, then stood and warmed himself by it for a while before starting on his morning chores. The bread starter was stiff and cold, and had to be left near the fire – but not too near – to warm up while he put on water for tea, and gathered ingredients for breakfast.

They'd had ham again as part of their dinner their the night before. He cut the leftovers up in small cubes, and diced some bacon and potatoes and onions as well, and fried them all up together, making a rather greasy but good-tasting hash. He fried slices of yesterday's bread in the drippings. Keran came in when it was almost ready, and made the tea for both of them. They ate in the kitchen, as they had been doing since the snows came, it being warmer in there. After the meal Keran went into the cold dining hall to do his morning exercises, while Feynriel cleaned up from breakfast and made the bread dough, setting the covered bowl of it on the mantle to rise, the counter being too cold now.

The two of them dressed warmly, and went outside, spending some time on chopping up several of the logs they'd gathered in before the snows came. There'd been more snow in the night; they had to clear it away from around the chopping block before they could set to work. Feynriel was extra-careful about how he set his feet before he started chopping; sometimes it was icy underfoot, and slipping while using the axe would be very bad.

The clouds thinned and the sun came out while they were working. It made everything very bright, and there was a slight breeze, which made it even colder than when the clouds had been there. Feynriel blinked, and blinked again, the glare making his eyes water. He set down the axe, and tried to dry his eyes, but they started running again right away.

"Enough for today," Keran said, patting him on one shoulder. "Put the axe away, and go back indoors."

He nodded, and did as told. It was good to be back inside. His eyes stopped watering, though his skin felt strange as it warmed again. An odd prickly feeling, almost itchy. His hands had turned bright red. Keran came back inside as well, and they sat down and drank tea together, then carried wood in, restocking the piles in the kitchen, workroom, office, and bedroom. They had done so most days since the snow had come, except when it was storming outside; enough wood always indoors so that they'd have enough even if they couldn't go outside for a few days, Keran had said.

Once they had warmed up again after finishing that, Feynriel went to the workroom, and lit the fire there, then set to work. There was nothing that needed maintenance right now, so he made something new, his hands moving surely, steadily, as they carved precise lines in the surface of a dagger. He filled the tiny grooves with lyrium melted in a small crucible over a very hot flame. He was very careful when he worked with lyrium, always hanging a sign on the door first that let Keran know not to enter carelessly. Lyrium was dangerous; not as bad for the tranquil, whom it couldn't affect much any more, but it was still a poison. He was very careful not to breathe the fumes as he worked with it. Careful, too, not to handle it with bare skin, wearing thin leather gloves as he worked. Once the dagger was finished and polished and put away again, ready for someone to enchant, he cleaned up. He wiped down the workbench and everything nearby very carefully and thoroughly with a moistened cloth to make sure any tiny particles of lyrium dust were removed. A few particles might not hurt anyone, but if you didn't clean up each time, they might accumulate, and that could be dangerous. So he always cleaned, after every time he worked with it. And the crucible of lyrium, along with the special tools for working with lyrium, were all locked away in a vault set in the floor, when not in use.

Keran was leaning against the wall in the hallway outside when he went to remove the sign. "Lunch is ready," the man said, and left. Feynriel put the sign away, then followed him downstairs. They ate lunch; the bread – heavier in winter, not rising as well in the cold – toasted and topped with melted cheese, and soup made of more of the leftover ham, potatoes, and onions.

After lunch Feynriel returned to the workroom. He settled down at a table, with pens and brushes and coloured inks, glue and gilt, and a large sheet of vellum, carefully pinned to the work surface. A quote from the Canticles was written on it, and the design for the accompanying illumination lightly sketched in around it. Curving lines to frame it, filled with hills and mountains, forests, animals, people, a woman burning in a fire while a standing man thrust a sword through her, at one side of it, and at the other side the same woman, raising her hand in benediction, the sword hanging forgotten in her other hand, the man kneeling before her. Andraste and Hessarian, he knew. He did not bother reading the passage, but set to work with inks and brushes, carefully flooding different areas with bright colour, none of the areas adjacent to each other. It would be the work of many days to colour it all in, he knew, each area needing to dry thoroughly before the one next to it could be filled, so the colours wouldn't bleed together, and then additional shading done over top of that, and gilding, and the final tracing in dark ink of all the edges. And then it would be framed, and sold for a lot of gold, so that someone could hang it on their wall, and admire it, or ignore it, or pray before it, depending on who bought it and why.

He worked until his hands tired, then went down to the kitchen and had tea, knowing that tired hands might shake and spoil the work. And then he worked on it a while longer, and when his hands tired again, stopped work on it for the day. There was not enough time left in the day to start a third project, and so he closed up the workroom, and went down to the kitchen, took out cleaning supplies, and wandered around the building, finding things that needed cleaning and dealing with them, until Keran called him for dinner.

It was stew tonight, made of dried beef chopped in pieces, potatoes, carrots, and beer, with dumplings. The long slow cooking had softened the beef, but it was still chewier than a stew made of fresh meat would have been. But good, and tasty, and there was very little leftover afterwards to put aside for use in tomorrow's lunch.

They cleaned up the kitchen together, as they had resumed doing since the snows came. And then they went to bed.

Usually Feynriel went to sleep quickly, but tonight he could not. He lay awake instead, listening to Keran toss and turn and mutter to himself before finally sleeping, then lay awake longer, listening to the quiet. It was very quiet here, compared to everywhere he could ever remember living. The alienage, with his mother, had always been noisy, even in the middle of the night, as the elves who worked on different shifts at the foundry, or the docks, or elsewhere came and went. The Dalish had been noisy at night too, often sitting up until late, singing or dancing or telling stories, and even once they retired, there had been the night noises, of couples together in their aravels or in the shadowed woods nearby, of snoring, or children having nightmares, the guards talking quietly as they patrolled outside, all the sounds of community life together.

The Gallows, too, had been full of noise. Snores. Coughs. Cries. The pacing of guards in the halls. Distant screams, sometimes. The faint background noises of the city, so close and yet so far across the harbour. Even the tranquil dormitory had its own noises, the sounds of so many people living together in such a small space, the quiet murmur of talk each night after lights-out as first one tranquil than another would speak up about things they had done that day, or seen, as they shared news about the templars, the mages, the city. They talked it all over, all of them, lying there awake in darkness, making sense of things, figuring out rules. Remembering, so that even after one of them disappeared, as they sometimes did – taken elsewhere, or sometimes dead – there was still someone who knew their story, where they had come from, what they had done, what had been done to them and by whom. It was a shared history, the stories that they passed around in the darkness each night.

They shared beds sometimes too, shared touches, keeping their sounds quiet as they shared what small goodness they could still have with one another. He had done that sometimes too, learning what touches to his body and what touches to other bodies brought pleasure, something he'd had no experience of before the Gallows. He'd been still a child in the alienage, and then too young and an outsider among the Dalish. It was only once he'd been brought to the Gallows that he'd learned of the pleasure of touch, and the pain of it from the wrong hands.

Keran had good hands. It had felt good, the nights when Keran had given him a massage before bed, but those had ended when the snows came. He touched himself under the covers, lightly, remembering Keran's hands on his back, the goodness of it. He wondered what it would be liked to be touched by Keran, as another tranquil would have touched him, gentle touches in the night.

The fire popped, and settled, logs shifting as one lower in the stack broke apart. He turned his head to look, and saw that some coals had rolled out, glowing dimly red on the hearthstone. They were safe there, there was nothing they could burn, but he didn't like to see there there, glowing so close to the dry wood floor. It was messy, and out of place, and fire was dangerous if not contained. He rose, quietly, and silently lifted the brush from the rack of tools, whisking the coals back into the fireplace, into the pile of soft grey ash, where they were safe. He hung the brush back up, neatly, and turned to return to his bed, taking the few strides back toward it.

The window caught his attention, as he was about to turn and sit down on his bed. The heat of the fire had melted the frost earlier, and most of the glass was still clear, the night outside and fire inside turning it into a dark distorting mirror, his fire-edged reflection an abstract moving shape against the darkness. But as the fire burned down it had cooled in the room, and the frost was growing again, from the edges in, curving feathery curls of crystals, glittering white against the darkness. It was beautiful, and he stopped, and stood still, watching, bed and sleep forgotten, too absorbed in watching the intricate patterns forming to even notice the growing cold.