39: What the Eyes Can't See (Part IX)
"A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up."
― Mae West
Almira was beyond miffed.
"I cannot believe you did not warn me!" she grumbled once more.
Krem turned to her, a charmingly innocent expression on his face.
"Warn you of what?" he wondered. "It would be terribly presumptuous of me to assume you and Private Chauncey wouldn't hit it off," he shrugged nonchalantly.
Grim grunted spiritedly but then feigned he was clearing his throat once Almira shifted her murderous gaze to him.
"But then what happened?" Skinner insisted. "And stop interrupting!" she warned Krem.
"Well," Almira resumed her narrative, surrounded by the Chargers. "I think he was trying to make up for losing our tickets, missing the Inquisitor's speech, and the whole seating arrangement confusion at the dinner table—"
"What seating arrangement confusion? I missed that part!" Stitches protested, pushing past Dalish and Rocky with his drink in hand.
"We had to sit on these little footstools at the edge of the table," Almira explained. "It was the only thing at hand. My dinner plate was right here the whole time," she stated, drawing a line with her hand by her neck. "He said to me then, 'Did you know that I am famous in my village for my voice?' And I said, 'If you start singing to me right now, I am going to split your face in half.' And he said, 'Ha! That would be a mistake, because I am NOT going to sing to you!' And I was about to say, 'That's the best thing about this evening so far,' but then he leaned in, close to my ear…"
Krem sat up a bit, uncomfortable at the thought of Chauncey behaving so boldly, as the others listened, mesmerized by the tale of imminent disaster.
Skinner clapped her hand over her mouth in disbelief, vicariously mortified for Chauncey.
"He didn't. Oh, Maker… tell us he didn't sing."
"Nope. He didn't sing," she said dryly. "Not Chauncey."
She paused for effect.
They were all on tenterhooks, waiting for her to go on.
"Well?…" Skinner despaired.
"He began to yodel," she fumed.
They all fell into a stunned silence.
It was too much.
Krem threw his head back and began to laugh loudly in earnest. They were all laughing at that point, imagining the gawky private yodeling to a very pissed off Almira.
"I said to him, 'Stop it now, or I will make you.' And then I swear he started to yodel louder. So I grabbed him by the collar and tried to push him off the footstool. But he wouldn't be quiet! He wouldn't shut up! We were wrestling at the end of the table and everyone was silent, just looking at us! I was so embarrassed."
"What did you do?" Stitches egged her on.
"I just grabbed a dinner roll off my plate and tried to stuff it in his mouth to make him stop. But I shouldn't have bothered because two guards ran up to us and escorted us out for being disruptive," she sulked. "I didn't even tell you the worst of it yet!" she continued, indignantly.
"Mercy! There is more?" Rocky cried out incredulously, wiping the tears from his eyes.
"Would you believe that after all that, as we were standing there outside the hall, he had the gall to say that he'd had fun that evening and that he'd like to see me again? I told him I'd rather be shit on by a dragon than ever go out with him again, but he said he'd make it up to me and that he'd give me a token of his affection. This morning I woke up afraid he was going to do something stupid, so I was very relieved when I went to work and nothing had happened," she told them. "But then… when I was doing my rounds and pulled out this one chamberpot from beneath a cot, I had the surprise of my life."
She leaned back and pursed her lips.
"It was a chamberpot filled with flowers," she revealed in an irate tone. "He picked me all these flowers but stuck them in his chamberpot."
"Nooooo!" Skinner cried.
"He wanted to make sure you received them," Rocky chortled.
"It is sweet…in a completely deranged way," Dalish concluded.
Krem just laughed until his stomach ached, until he ran out of breath, calming down only to erupt again upon imagining the furious look on Almira's face.
"Just another fragrant bouquet," he managed to say, his face flushed from laughing so hard.
"Actually, it wasn't all that bad," Almira admitted to Krem later on, as they wandered back together to her quarters. The night was crisp and clear; the moon loomed large in the sky, glowing brightly above them, bathing them in a silvery light.
"Chauncey is pretty harmless," Krem agreed. "It could have been much more unpleasant."
"Oh, really? Remind me to yodel at you in public sometime," she muttered, watching him succumb to another giggling fit. "But you know, even though Chauncey is an ass, the Inquisition has allowed him to try so many different career paths…I think he's inspired me. I think I know what I might want to try next!" she announced.
"Oh?" Krem leaned against the wall.
"I've made a decision," she told him, her eyes twinkling. "I want to become an Inquisition scout!"
Krem shifted in his spot, finally shaking his head.
"You shouldn't do it."
"Why not?" she insisted. "I have visited most of southern Thedas with my father, I know many remote areas, and I am a good traveler. I can walk large distances in a day," she began.
He waved his hands before her in disagreement.
"It's not that, Almira," he told her. "All those things are true, but there's more to being an Inquisition scout. The Chargers have gone out with Scout Harding and her team on more than a few missions to establish base camps at remote locations or reestablish communications in areas where contact was lost. I can tell you right now: every single scout knows how to fight, how to wield a weapon. The places they go to are dangerous," he emphasized.
"I can learn," she said pensively. "Everyone needs to start somewhere."
Krem watched her, so hopelessly clueless, so very innocent and naive of the darkness that lurked off the beaten path. The thought of her going off on an expedition made him worried.
"Under better circumstances, though. This is no time to take unnecessary risks," he told her. "There are Venatori out there, rift demons…"
She contemplated him, a serious expression on his earnest face, his arms crossed imposingly over his chest even as he leaned casually against the stone wall. He was strong and accustomed to battle. She couldn't imagine what that life was like. She probably seemed so helpless to him, she imagined.
"I am sure I could hold my own," she told him. "Baba and I have had our share of scrapes when we were on the road."
"What? Outrunning druffalo in a field?" he joked, smirking.
"Well, my father knows how to use a slingshot. Once I was being chased by a man—"
"Only once?" he laughed, his eyes widening.
She huffed. He chuckled, charmed; he loved watching her brow furrow, her exasperated expressions.
"—He was yelling that I was picking herbs in his land and tried to take my basket. But he was no farmer and that wasn't any farmland we knew of, so I started to run and he started to chase me…but I made him run for a long time and he couldn't catch me. I called out to my father, and he aimed the slingshot and knocked the man out cold in the field."
"That's impressive," Krem agreed. "What did you do next?"
"We hurried up out of there- hitched the cart and rode out before he came to. Then we told a patrol we met up on the road. I don't think they did anything about him, though. Didn't even ask where we'd left him. I'm sure it's because we were elves."
"So your most valuable skill is that you can beat a hasty retreat?" he asked as he tilted his head.
Almira paused. It didn't sound right.
"When you put it like that…"
"Danger comes along, everyone else fights…and you run."
She pondered it for a moment before nodding.
"Absolutely. I get to be the only survivor."
He laughed lightly.
"I could deliver messages between camps, run through hostile territory," she imagined, spreading her hands out before her, summoning a desolate landscape filled with dangers.
"Do you know how quickly demons move? They glide— most don't even have legs—" Krem began.
"Do you know how quickly I run?" she challenged him. "I'm fast…very fast…" She pointed her finger at him. "And don't you dare make any jokes about how I'm 'fast' in other ways, Cremiscius Aclassi! You are in enough trouble with me as it is!"
He raised his palms to her appeasingly.
"I said nothing…"
She narrowed her eyes shrewdly and sashayed up to him.
"I bet I could outrun you."
Krem laughed again, amused.
"You might be fast, but I'm faster," he argued.
"No, you're not," she grinned sassily.
"You don't want to find out," he warned.
"Oh, but I do!" she moved towards him as he stared at her in wonder, her face suddenly close up to his.
He felt a sharp pinch on his nose.
"You're it!" she yelled, turning away and running down the courtyard at a frenzied pace.
He swore under his breath and lurched forward, in her direction.
"You brat!" he yelled at her.
She halted abruptly at the top of a stairwell and leaned forward.
"Does Aclassi mean "of the turtles" in Tevene?"
He did not even bother to reply and instead raced up the steps, the adrenaline pumping through him. He couldn't believe how she rested her hands over her waist and began to wiggle her hips in a little mocking dance as he approached her rapidly.
"How will you ever live this down!" she teased as he reached the top of the steps.
His arm shot out just as she turned away from him, his fingers grazing her back. He heard her shriek, delighted, and he growled. She was fast, he thought, his boots pounding over the cobblestones, a crooked grin insinuating itself on his lips. She moved nimbly, flying over the ground. In a few seconds, she had managed to put a respectable distance between them—and he was a fast runner himself.
They raced throughout Skyhold, bursting past a group of Chantry Sisters returning from evening services in the garden chapel, piercing the austere silence of the archways with the stomping of their feet and her maddening giggles.
"When I catch you, I'm going to teach you a lesson!" he threatened.
"Boo!…First you have to actually catch me. Hopefully the lesson won't be about running, because you really suck at that, Lieutenant!" she taunted him, turning her head and sticking out her tongue.
They were both panting at this point, weaving past startled bystanders, up and down stairwells, until they were racing down the ramparts, ducking through dusty, decaying passageways, speeding over creaking floorboards, and back out into the open.
He finally reached her when one of the doors to a connecting passageway would not budge. As he rushed in pursuit onto the ramparts, he saw her struggle with the door. She was nervously casting glances over her shoulder as she frantically tugged at the broken handle. He boosted his pace for the last stretch, knowing he would catch her before she could wriggle away.
There was nowhere to run, he realized gleefully: she was his.
Almira let out a terrified cry as he pinned her against the door, both of them out of breath, exhausted. They examined each other wordlessly, his chest heaving, little beads of sweat on his forehead, and he saw her smile at him broadly.
"I win," she gasped.
"What? You," he said between breaths, "are absolutely crazy."
"If it hadn't been for this broken door, I would have easily gotten away," she explained.
He shook his head in disbelief, stepping back to contemplate her.
"So that's going to be your strategy? Argue with your pursuers once they catch you?"
He watched as she feinted to the left and attempted to slip past him from the right. His arms flew up, trapping her again, between himself and the door.
"Blight!" she bemoaned.
"This," he continued, "is where the fighting comes in handy," he winked.
She was so close, he thought, peering into her impish green eyes.
He wanted to kiss her so badly right then, he realized.
They remained in silence, lost in each other's proximity, still, as they regained their breaths.
It was due to an unaccustomed and fearful shyness on her part that she did not give in to the impulse to raise her hand to his face, caress his cheek, wipe his brow. They lingered like that, unwilling to interrupt the moment, using their tiredness as an excuse.
"Come on," he finally shook himself away, denying the desire that threatened to overcome him— that could possibly ruin the friendship they had built. "You had to run to the opposite end of the fortress, didn't you? Now we have to walk all the way back."
"Do you want me to run down to the infirmary?" she taunted. She had felt a stab of disappointment as he had pulled away from her but concealed it with cheer. "I can have a team of healers come get you in a stretcher," she said with false helpfulness.
He sneered, placing his hands on his back, and stretched.
"You know, if I hadn't been wearing all this armor, I would have been even faster," he told her, waiting for her reaction.
"Excuses, excuses," she sang in an infuriating tone.
She then approached him, looping her arm in his, as she often did, tugging him forward. He was glad for her touch, for her nearness as they began their leisurely walk back, neither one wanting to let go of the other.
Krem inspected his equipment as the Chargers unpacked at the campsite. As he lay his maul down on the ground, his eyes glimpsed a shadow— something small and dark, a lump of sorts, tied in thin leather straps at the bottom of the heavy handle. He squinted in the firelight, turning the maul around to examine it closer.
It was a tiny wooden carving of a turtle, securely bound against the handle.
"Brat," he uttered softly, as he carefully undid the straps and placed the little carving in the safety of his pocket.
Does "Aclassi" mean "of the turtles" in Tevene?
He snorted, shaking his head. He could envision her comically shaking her hips at him on top of the stairwell.
He missed her something fierce at that moment.