-4-
Gabriel was bewildered.
The girl, the nymph, Naruto, is still sitting there on the ground, looking at him with the most intense blue eyes he has ever seen. He should be flustered from the way she is still naked, but now that the spell and his brief moment of surprise have been broken, he realizes that she looks like she has been to the deepest part of the deep roads and then back.
Her hair, which looked almost ethereal, now seems dirty and dull. Her eyes looked tired and lost, and there was smear of blood faintly appeared on her baby face, beside her - her whiskers?
There are cuts on her body, or at least on the bare shoulders he allows himself to look, and it looks like it healed badly. Just one look and he knows that it would be infected if left like that.
Then, when his eyes travel back to her face, Gabriel notices that she is blushing.
Oh.
She is embarrassed.
Oh, goggling all you want, why don't you?
He berates himself quietly when he realizes that he was so occupied with his curiosity that he forgot to be a gentleman. A noble man. So he turns to ask Alistair, and is surprised when he sees that the man is already looking through their packs with an uncomfortable pink on his cheeks.
Gabriel coughs.
"Alistair, there are clean clothes left in the pack, I assume?"
"Already looking, leader. Yep. This is it."
"Great. Thanks..Er..a lot."
"Right."
Naruto looks relief when she sees the clean deep brown clothes, both trousers and a shirt, in his hands and reach out eagerly to obtain it. While the girl is putting on the clothes and letting out a sigh that sounds suspiciously content, Gabriel looks pointly to another direction, all the while trying to make sense of the situation they abruptly find themselves in.
She makes another sound, a happy sound. And they turn back to see what she wants. However, after trying to decipher the strange noise she is making, it's becoming clearer and clearer that they won't understand each other much.
Whatever she says, he doesn't understand. Two Grey Wardens and one witch all look at the girl when she gestures wildly while speaking rapidly about something in strange language, and feel suddenly incompetent.
The sound she makes, it is short and animated. And not familiar in the least.
It doesn't even sound Orlaisian, or Antivan.
"This girl is crazy, yes." Morrigan mumbles, and he realizes that he's beginning to develop a bad case of headache.
"She doesn't look dangerous, though." Alistair chimes in after looking at how the girl still is seemingly speaking about nothing and everything at the same time. His eyes, though contain suspicion, are a lot more softened than before.
It's true that Naruto doesn't look dangerous but he remembers the way she knocks the sword off his hands, and her speed - that isn't a speed of a typical, normal girl, he is sure of that fact, for one.
"She is skilled." Gabriel says simply.
"I don't think she is dangerous in the sense that, well, she doesn't seem to want to kill us, brother-warden." Alistair carefully states his opinion, and the warden finds himself agreeing with that one observation.
"But why is she in the middle of Korcari Wilds, alone, naked?" Morrigan rolls her eyes.
Good point.
"That - Oh maker, she is crying!"
Already, he is getting too old for this.
:..