"So," Eleanor said, running her thumb along the spines of books as she stood in front of Cullen's bookshelf.
"Hm?" he said looking up quickly from a missive he was writing, hunched over his desk in a way that was so irrevocably him that it almost made Eleanor laugh.
"We're gonna live here."
Cullen set his stylus down and stood up straight, looking over to Eleanor who hadn't turned away from the shelves.
"I know this isn't what we planned," he said.
"No, it's alright," she said, turning to face him. "I just… So Evelyn has me doing all this work that I don't really understand and I feel like I should. She wants me to be the face of all of this and I feel so… inadequate, you know? Like, there's a fundamental failing of my person that's keeping me from even beginning to get a hold on this."
"Eleanor, you were down there. You know as much about this as -"
"No, Cullen, I mean… I don't have the background information, I can't do research, I mean… Dude, I can't read." Her shoulders slumped hard, and she bit the corner of her mouth, looking helpless. "I'm fucking illiterate."
Cullen slowly stepped from his desk over to her, putting his hands on her arms. He had an eyebrow raised and he gave her a sad little smile. "El. I hadn't even thought. I don't - I don't think any of us did." Holding her just above her elbow, Eleanor felt his fingers tapping slowly as he thought, his eyes glancing over the books behind him.
"I have an idea," he said. "Let me finish this, but meet me in the library. I'll be there soon."
She sat in a cushy chair near a window, gazing up and around at the books that towered over her. Eleanor had a thought, just a fleeting one but enough to set her mind racing, that maybe if she could read these, she could be the one who could figure this whole thing out. She pushed it down quickly, telling herself that that was ridiculous; Evelyn and Dorian were terribly smart, hell, Cullen was terribly smart, and certainly they had done their reading. She remembered Dorian sitting half on her armchair, half on the floor, surrounded by books and scrolls and codices, all of them complete gibberish to her. And he had been looking for the same answers she was looking for now. If anyone would have found them, it would have been him.
But no, maybe not. He had had the same amount of information about her earth as she did about Thedas. Leliana supposedly had agents about but they weren't talking, Eleanor assumed for good reason. Leliana seemed the type to never not have a good reason. But she also didn't seem the type to needlessly withhold information from her colleagues, so maybe the kind of information Eleanor wanted wasn't the kind that Leliana's agents were looking for.
God, she wished Dorian were here right now. He had sussed out so much while half-drunk on her living room floor. The two of them together in this repository of knowledge… well, probably mostly Dorian, but there it was again, the fact that she was the only one from earth - Earth? She still didn't know - and maybe, just maybe…
And she missed him. She didn't realize how much until she and Cullen had started packing up their things, and they thought they would be coming to Thedas for good, and she realized she might be able to see him again. He had taught her almost everything she knew about her magic, about the Fade, covertly let her in on things Cullen, the ex-templar, might not be willing to tell her, or might not see the same way. Cullen, who would never willingly keep information from her, but who, despite his openness, had a decidedly militant bent on things. She had grown fond of Dorian. He had become her friend. A good friend. A take no bullshit sort of friend. But now he was in Tevinter, wherever the hell that was. It was where he was from, and it sounded far away, and he wasn't here, and so Eleanor stared down the books with narrowed eyes, almost angry at their unwillingness to give up the kind of information that her Tevinter friend had relinquished so freely.
"There you are," said Cullen, ascending the steps with his arms full of parchment, fingers full of quills and ink. "Here, a table," he said, and went around the cozy little alcove in which Eleanor had situated herself, dumping his armload on a free surface and sitting down. He patted the bench beside him with a smile.
Eleanor rose slowly, easing herself out of her comfortable chair to sit on the hard bench that Cullen had chosen.
"I thought," he said, stretching out a piece of blank parchment in front of where Eleanor would sit, "that it might be good for you to have something to refer back to so that you can study on your own."
"What now?" Eleanor said, getting situated on the bench, tucking her robes beneath her.
"You're going to read," Cullen said plainly. "And write." He righted an ink pot and uncorked it, starting to set it down before asking, "Which hand?"
Eleanor flexed the fingers on her right hand, the hand closest to Cullen, and so he set the ink at the top right of the parchment before stacking all of the other blank sheets into a neat pile and gathering up the extra ink and styluses and putting them aside. He had a thick, well-thumbed book and he flipped it open to a point toward the end, pressing the spine flat in front of him. He grabbed a stylus and dipped it in the ink, dividing the paper in half with a clean, thick line before handing the utensil to her. He reached and pointed to the left column with a firm finger. "This half for…" with the same hand, he tapped his thumb and middle finger together while pointing at Eleanor.
"...English?" she suggested, holding the stylus limply.
"There you are," he said with a snap, "and this half for the common tongue."
Eleanor reached up and scratched the back of her neck, a hesitant expression on her face. Well, she had asked for this, after all, but his enthusiasm was both endearing and intimidating.
"So what am I writing, exactly?" she asked, looking at the open book on the table.
"Ah, well, I've brought The Chant."
Eleanor's expression remained frozen except for her right eyebrow which slowly slid its way closer to her hairline.
"I just thought it would be easy," he said, a little defensively, leaning against the wall behind him, "and," he added, "there's a lot you'll want to know in here, I should think. Scholars have been analysing the Chant for centuries."
"Oh lord," Eleanor mumbled. "Alright, Cul, I submit to your will." She clucked her tongue and gave him a very forced grin. "So where are we starting?"
Cullen scanned the text in front of him, and then narrowed his eyes a bit.
"That's not a good face," Eleanor said, reaching out to nudge him on the chin with her thumb.
"I was going to start with the Canticle of Transfiguration," he muttered, "but perhaps not."
Leaning forward to turn her head up at him, getting between the commander and the book, she said, "Hey, Commander Vague, you can talk to me. I'm new to all this, okay, but I'm not gonna bite your face off. You know me better."
Looking down at her, only inches from her face as she continued to monopolize the space above the book, Cullen pursed his lips but reached out an arm and pulled Eleanor closer, and when she finally deigned to move, he kissed the back of her head, kissed her earlobe and said, "Alright, El. But don't say I didn't warn you."
"Mm, consider me warned, Commander," she said, and tilted her head, inviting another kiss. Cullen obliged her and then let her go, pointing to the page in front of him, a series of dark lines and squiggles that Eleanor could make no sense of.
Well, she thought, at least not yet.
"The Canticle of Transfigurations are the teachings of Andraste, regarding magic -"
"This is why I was warned, I take it."
"I can read something else," he said again, a little more exasperated this time.
Eleanor relented. "No, I'm sorry. You're right. You did warn me. And I said I wouldn't bite your face off. It's a nice face."
Despite his brief tenseness, Cullen felt himself start to smile. He reached up a hand to scratch his cheek and said, "Yes, well. Shall we begin?"
"Alright," Eleanor said, dipping the stylus quickly and wiping the fine point on the edge of the small jar. She leaned forward a bit to follow Cullen's finger as he read and asked, "Go slow."
The commander cleared his throat and begin to softly read, "These truths the Maker has revealed to me: as there is but one world -"
Eleanor snorted as she scribbled, "So much for that."
Cullen rolled his eyes, "Well, it's not… entirely literal."
She looked up at him and said, "Go on."
"One life, one death, there is but one god, and He is our Maker. They are sinners, who have given their love to false gods."
Rolling her eyes and hunching her shoulders dramatically as she wrote, Eleanor said, "I guess every religion has one."
"Oh for the love of -" Cullen began, but in a dry, mocking voice, Eleanor began to recite, "'You shall have no other gods before Me,' or something about so-called gods or something. I dunno, Cullen, I never went to church."
He didn't answer slowly and said, "What's that?"
"...the Bible?"
His look was blank.
Eleanor leaned forward and pressed a hand to her forehead, resting her elbow on the blank side of the paper as she rubbed her brow. "Well, there's that at least." She sat back up and reread the verse to him. "'They are sinners who have given their love to false gods.' Continue."
He gave her a hard look.
"Just read, okay. Let me have my thing. I promise I'm paying attention."
Cullen tapped his finger nervously and said quickly, with a tight jaw, "Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him."
Eleanor's pen hovered above the page, the ink never darkening the parchment.
"Yes?" he asked darkly.
"What the hell does that mean!" she dropped the stylus and threw up her hands.
Cullen put his hand over his mouth and said through his fingers, but mostly to himself, "I should have picked a different verse." He sighed and said, "Eleanor, if you even knew how much has been written about that single line."
"Well I can see why!" She gave her hands a little shake, calming down as she scratched her hairline. "Okay, alright. Scholarly endeavour." She rolled her shoulders a bit. "Why don't you teach me these little doodles you call writing." She squinted over at the book and said, "But first I think I need my glasses."