A/N:

Again, sorry this took such a long time. Things should be hopefully better after New Years. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving (those who celebrate it, at least!)

Nike's first instinct was to pull her arm away from the old woman as they stepped into the hut, but she resisted it. Part of her resistance was the firm conditioning of her upbringing to mind her manners and be polite at all times, especially if you were a guest in someone's home. The other part was due to some unswerving and illogical certainty that to rip her arm back would tear it wide open, as if the hag's fingers were actually claws.

Morrigan followed them, apparently having little interest in helping the men or playing hostess outside.

The inside of the hut was much as could be expected from the outside. Rough and fairly simple, it seemed to consist of a main room with a pair of smaller rooms adjacent. The doors were poorly fitted and sported thin gaps, but Nike could not see through these gaps enough to do more than guess they were probably bedrooms.

The main room was lined with clutter. Leaning stacks of moldering books, some literally falling apart, were cast without order or reason against the walls. A couple of small, rough-hewn tables bowed under the weight of pans, dishes, boxes, sticks festooned with bones or feathers, beads, clothes in various states of disrepair, and other odds and ends that Nike could not identify. The dried, tied together skeleton of some kind of small flying creature hung like wind chimes from the ceiling. It rattled faintly as the air from their entrance shifted it.

The biggest thing in the room was the fireplace, clogged with ash and bearing a hooked swing arm. The fireplace was cold at the moment, and looked large enough for a man in full armor to sit in. Someone had apparently made a cursory attempt recently to scoop out some of the ash and clean it. The faint grimace Morrigan gave toward the ashes as her mother pulled Nike across the room suggested it was probably her.

The hag brought Nike fairly into the cluttered room before releasing her and turning on her daughter.

"Now, now, don't be rude. Chairs. We don't want to sit on the floor."

"There is a chair just behind…oh never mind."

Rather moodily, Morrigan strode past her mother and grabbed hold of a chair that was literally a foot behind her, yanking it over closer and then giving the old woman a mock smile. "Your seat?"

The hag ignored her, wandering to one of the piles against the far wall and digging out a box. Morrigan watched her with now blatant irritation, then looked at Nike.

"My apologies," she said, and found another chair nearby that she drew over. "Please, sit."

Nike sat down as the hag shook the box off of whatever small debris had caked the top, then brought it over and plopped it unceremoniously in her lap. She wasn't expecting that, and the box nearly toppled off her legs before Nike awkwardly caught it.

"Your treaties," the hag said, and then sat down as well. "The spells and protections the Wardens had put into place had long since worn off. Had I not taken them, they would have rotted to nothing ages ago."

"So you rescued them," Nike said, the witch's indignant analogy outside falling into place. She carefully opened the box. Within was a thin leather messenger's satchel, containing four identical wooden canisters, each similar to a small hunting quiver with a weather cap. Drawing one out, she opened it and saw the tight coil of parchment inside. She closed it up again.

"Do you not want to pull them out? Read them?" the witch asked in seeming surprise.

"Should I have reason to doubt they are what you say?" Nike asked in return. The hag's eyes glittered oddly and then she laughed.

"Oh, I do like you. I knew I would."

That statement puzzled Nike. "You…knew you would?"

"Oh, don't listen to what a foolish, doddering, mad old woman says-"

"Advice I cling to every day," Morrigan said with some blithe amusement. Her mother gave her a sidelong glance and a longsuffering smirk.

"Indeed. My daughter is wiser than the most foolish fools but more foolish than the wise would agree."

Nike couldn't quite get her head around that one and so didn't try. Morrigan appeared to have understood it, and while her expression didn't change Nike thought she saw some heightened color on her cheeks. It was not the blush of the flattered, but rather the flush of the annoyed.

"But you," the old woman said, leaning forward with the intent expression of a bird of prey. Nike realized she'd leaned back in reaction only a moment later, and felt her own flush of irritation. "You are clever. That's good. Clever is useful. Clever is right. But it can also be messy, don't forget that. Oh no, that wouldn't do."

She suddenly looked sharply at her daughter and beamed a grin. "I am glad you found a clever one."

"And I am overjoyed I could please you," her daughter said with dry disinterest, then looked at Nike. "Would you like some tea perhaps? A snifter of brandy? If this conversation with my mother continues, perhaps you might be more interested in a tiny capsule of nightshade?"

"Oh, she thinks she's filled with wit," the mother chortled. "She's only half right."

Nike looked back and forth between them with a dull sort of fascination. Unsure if the offer of a drink was genuine or merely a convenient way for the girl to lead into her latest biting maternal insult, Nike chose to treat it as if it were genuine. "No, thank you. "

"Girl, do go out and make yourself useful," the old woman said, suddenly seeming irritated herself. For a moment, as she looked up at her daughter, her eyes seemed to be chipped straight out of glass again- the light in them gaining an unnatural razor's edge. "There will be plenty of time for you to moon later. Be sure that cockalorum is turning out."

"Do you mean supper, or the one making it?" Morrigan asked, but something subtle had changed in her face, the same as it had changed in her mother's. If the old woman's gaze had turned to sharp glass, Morrigan's had turned briefly into flesh at risk of being punctured by said glass-and then a determined steel who thought (or dreamt) itself impervious to it. Her retort did not have the same bite as her previous, and seemed cursory, as if the effort was only a token show of defiance than any real feeling of it.

Without waiting for an answer she turned and strode out, leaving Nike alone with her mother. As the hag looked back at her, for a moment that glass remained in her eyes. They seemed both intensely sharp and incredibly depthless, a much paler shade of color than they had seemed before, nearly glowing.

It lasted only a moment- such a short moment that Nike quickly chalked it up to the light from the grimy and broken window nearby landing upon them in just the right quality and manner.

"Forgive me," she said after the weight of the woman's eyes started to grate on her. "I don't think I got your name."

The old woman smirked at her. "Names are not things that can be gotten, or at least taken away," she said. "And they are usually useless. However, if you must call me something, you may call me Flemeth."

Nike lifted her brows. "Flemeth? As in the Flemeth of legend?"

"Legends, stories, twaddle, balderdash, piffle and bosh, it's a name," she said. Nike looked at her, watching her as she might a fox caught in a trap or wounded by an arrow- one that still might turn and snap at any given moment.

"All right. Flemeth. I…appreciate you keeping these treaties safe. I will be sure to inform the Wardens of your care and consideration in doing so. I have no doubt they will be much appreciative-"

"Yes, no doubt," Flemeth said, in a tone that blatantly sarcastic almost to the point of outright mocking. "Much as those fellows outside are tripping over themselves in gratitude. Ah. Now I've offended you."

Nike had felt her cheeks heat again but schooled her expression. She could not help the stiff tone as she said, "Well, you have my appreciation at least. I wish we could remain for your hospitality but we really must be getting these back."

She stood up. If Flemeth was at all insulted by the spurring of the supper she had set the men to cooking, no sign of it appeared on her face.

"Be careful, clever girl," she said in a low tone as she rose to her feet as well. "When running for your life be cautious you don't slip in the blood of those who failed the run."

Nike didn't know what that meant either but she was more than done with this strange and foreboding woman and she wanted nothing more than to be out of that little cottage, manners be damned.

"I…will," she said, and half expected the woman to reach out and grab her arm again as she stepped past, to sink those fingers into her skin again. Only this time, they would be claws, of that Nike had no doubt even if she couldn't rationalize it.

However, Flemeth made no move to stop her, nor did she follow her. Nike could feel her eyes on her back all the way to the door as if they were spiders hanging off the cloth of her shirt.

For a moment returning to the bright sunlight of outside dazzled her and she blinked back the glare quickly. Alistair sat near the firepot that was now boiling, nearly finished stripping the chicken, feathers littering the ground around his feet. Jory and Daveth were standing about looking awkward, Jory red-faced. Morrigan leaned on her staff a few yards away, ignoring the men as if they were not even there. She stared skyward, toward the tops of the gnarled trees, eyes half lidded. Her expression was oddly feline. As Nike came out the men looked over as one, Alistair rising to his feet in a flutter of feathers.

"You have them?" he asked in surprise, noticing the box under her arm.

"Yes."

"Good, then let's get out of here," Jory said, casting a sidelong glance at Morrigan. "The faster the better."

"Aww, don't you want supper?" Daveth asked, a tone of teasing in his voice as he gestured at the rather sad looking chicken still hanging from Alistair's fist. The look Jory gave him could have melted steel.

Alistair's eyes shifted behind her and though Nike heard nothing, she knew without looking the old woman had followed her out and now stood in the door. Her immediate instinct was to turn and look at her, but she resisted it. She was not afraid of that old hag. She was not.

"Yes, let's go," he said quickly, laying the chicken across the stool he'd been sitting on. His eyes remained on the old woman. "Sorry…things to do, wars to fight. I'm sure supper would have been delicious. We'll take a rain check?"

"How about breakfast? Three days from now?" Flemeth asked matter-of-factly.

"Uh, sure," he replied. "Sure…why not?"

Nike glanced over again at Morrigan, but the younger woman seemed to have forgotten any of them existed. She was still looking toward the trees as if savoring the mid-morning sunlight. From there, Nike finally looked at Flemeth.

"Thank you for the treaties," she said.

I am not afraid. She is a withered old woman and only a coward's coward would be afraid.

"You'll come to regret saying that," Flemeth said, a wry twist to her thin mouth. "Thank me for the medicine. That will be more genuine."

This made no more sense than most anything else the woman had said, but her eyes had returned to that sharp glass. In the shadow of the doorway, they almost seemed to glow at Nike- like the eyes of some predator caught in the shadow of the evening underbrush.

"Let's…get going," Alistair said to her in a low voice, still eyeing the two women cautiously. Nike nodded silently, then turned her back on them and started once more up the wash.

They were well on their way back to Ostagar before any of them seemed to dare speak. Jory kept glancing behind them as they walked, as if certain he would catch Morrigan- or worse, her mother- trailing along behind them.

"So." Alistair was the first to break the silence, looking at Nike. "Dare I ask what she said to you?"

"A lot of nonsense," Nike told him. "She apparently took the treaties when the spells wore off to keep them safe."

"To what gain, I wonder?" Daveth asked. "She's no Warden, nor is that shiny-eyed daughter of hers. What's she got to gain by keeping our treaties?"

"They're witches, I'm tellin' you," Jory said, shaking his head. "We're lucky they didn't put us in that damned pot."

"Whether or not they're witches, we wouldn't have the treaties at all if they hadn't rescued them," Nike said.

"True," Alistair said, though he sounded a bit reluctant to admit it. He eyed the terrain ahead a moment, then suddenly turned and looked back as Jory started and drew his sword. Nike dropped the box with a thump, her bow in hand the next instance. Jory was looking at the scrubby trees nearby with intensity.

"What is it? Darkspawn?" Daveth asked, his own weapon in hand.

"No darkspawn, at least not too close," Alistair said, looking at the trees as well. "What did you see, Jory?"

"Not sure. Looked a moment like something up in the leaves there-"

Daveth looked thoughtful, then stooped and picked up a rock, pitching it into thickets part of the foliage. A raucous voice suddenly split the quiet, and a moment later a big flash of black took wing out of the trees and drifted up into the sky, tossing rough-throated sounds back at them. Jory let out a breath and scowled as he lowered his sword.

"Right bloody crows…"