A/N: Thank you for all the wonderful reviews! I will keep it coming! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I hope I keep you entertained! ~Penguin Regina

Reading

I am dreadful at this.

"You're doing great!" Hawke exclaims as we (finally!) finish with the reading primer. Her eyes are wide and bright with cheer.

I narrow my eyes and feel my scowl deepen. "You don't have to be patronizing. I know I'm very slow." I shake my head and cross my arms across my chest. I wonder how long before she gets sick of my glacier-like progress and stops my reading lessons.

Hawke sits bolt straight and looks at me with a blank expression. As she blinks a couple of times as color climbs up her neck to her cheeks and she open her eyes even wider.

"Fenris, you've got to be kidding me!" She exclaims throwing her arms into the air. "In a month you've learned to recognize and write the alphabet and you can sound out this entire primer! That's at two lessons a week, so…eight lessons into this? You're some kind of genius!" She shakes her head and gets up to pace in front of her library fireplace.

I look at her incredulously. She's most likely just stroking my ego. "Any child could do what I've done. You said yourself that the primer was like the one you used when you were six. I'm not sure how old I am, but I am definitely not six." I slump a bit into the chair.

Hawke stops pacing, puts her fists on her hips and stands right in front of the fire. "At age six I had already been learning to read for a bit over a year. I was the child of a Tower educated mage and a noblewoman. Teaching their kids to read was just par the course. I had books all around me! I was taught my letters every day!" she says excitably, her cheeks flushed from emotion.

Despite myself, Hawke's outburst is starting to change my opinion, but she's not finished.

"Besides, I'm a dreadful teacher! Bethany would be much better at this than me. She's the studious one. She's the one who got all the patience in the family." She strides up to me and pokes my chest with her finger. It's a bit like being attacked by a furious woodpecker.

"So, I don't want another word from you about being a bad reader. You're doing amazing, I'm a bad teacher and that's that! Now, grab that book up there. Not the green one, the one with the red cover. –Got it? Good. Sit your ass down and read the title to me." She sweep imperiously into her chair and stared at me intensely as I jump to comply.

"S—si-ege, siege –har-der. Siege Harder? Isn't this one of-? Oh yes, Va-rr—why does Varric have two r's in it?- Varric Te-se—no, Tetheras. We're going to read one of Varric's books?" I ask, baffled by the strange turn in my reading lesson.

"Seeing as you want more progress and Varric writes in fairly simple words –don't ever tell him I said that, yes, we'll be reading this. Besides, it has plenty of action and suspiciously familiar characters. It'll be fun." She is grinning at me as she says this.

"I don't know what to say. I'm sorry I doubted, Hawke, I-"I stammer, still uncertain of my feelings on the matter.

"Shh, never you mind. I know you have no patience, but don't put yourself down again. That's my friend you're talking about and I won't have it." She says as she places a hand on my wrist. "Now, let's begin with Varric's best seller to date. I'll warn you though; it's a complete bullshit fest."

I chuckle and turn to the first page. "The han-dsome—handsome- dwarf seemed to have met his match… oh Hawke." I groaned after reading the first line.

Her merry eyes sparkled. "Go on; wait till you meet his bumbling companions."

I groan again and carry on with my reading lesson.