After an hour, they had to take a break. Eleanor's hand was cramped from trying to write in the strange hash marks that were both so similar to and so unfamiliar from anything she had ever written before, though she still start to recognize some of them before Cullen would point to her mark, point to the page, and tell her what she was writing.
It was Cullen's mood, on the other hand, that was a bit crunched up. He should have expected Eleanor, strong-willed, straightforward Eleanor, to put up a fight against Transfigurations. Why would he have ever thought otherwise? And he really hadn't, not seriously, but she had been so… something, this morning in the chapel. Serene. Open.
Cullen rolled his eyes at himself. But that was not the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Eleanor had never done anything but put up a fight, and that was what he loved about her, that and so much more. How many women - how many people, indeed - would have stood on their farms in the dark of night, in the rain, and pointed a shotgun at a darkspawn patrol? Certainly not many. He had been fooling himself in some small way, thinking he could read her that line and brook no argument.
He sat at his desk with the Chant in front of him and rubbed his cheeks vigorously. She'd relaxed, she made a joke, but he'd seen the flash of coldness in her eyes when he'd said the verse, a look that seemed only to ask him, "Are you fucking serious?" Because that was absolutely what she would say. Except she hadn't. She'd asked what it had meant.
Should he explain it to her?, he wondered. No, explain was the wrong word. She was not the kind of person you explained things to. He could find her Justinia I's sermon.
She would tear it apart, but he could find it for her. And he knew exactly what she would say when she saw it, could almost hear her smoky voice saying the words: "This is some bullshit, Cul."
He laughed to himself and shook his head.
Eleanor sat on the battlements with a cigarette. She'd put on jeans and a t-shirt. The day had gotten hot, but was cooling off again. It was still very much spring, but summer was fast rolling in. She could smell warmth, could smell a storm, maybe days off, but it would come. She would know that smell anywhere.
Kicking her legs over the side, the ground hundreds of feet below, she thought about the words that Cullen had read to her. Magic was meant to serve man, not to rule over him. She pulled on her cigarette.
Magic, she thought. Not mages. In her mind, she repeated it. Magic, not mages.
She pushed thick smoke out of her nose. Did it make a difference? Did it matter at all? Evelyn was a mage and she was in charge of the whole god damned world, or so it felt. And apparently Leliana's work as Divine - she was still a bit hazy on all that, but she'd overheard a lot in these past two weeks - was doing much to make mages more accepted, at least officially, than ever before.
And then someone had tried to stab her. Or at least threatened to. Threatened her and the Inquisitor both.
Eleanor sucked her cigarette down to the end and lit another, kicking her heels against the stone.
