wemultitudinous:
“Now that sounds like a hell of a tale. Handsome, was he? Charming?”
Varric winks, laughter tucking itself at the corner of his mouth and his eyes, dancing across his features like the flickering light from the fire. For all that the laughter might be at her expense, though, there’s no real cruelty in it. Maker knows that they need all the little amusements they can get, day-to-day, the world being what it is.
“You know what your problem is, Seeker? You always take the shortest route.” He settles back into his chair and examines her for a long moment, a calculated sort of gaze like he’s trying to decide whether to say anything further. In the end, though, he’s never been much of a one for caution. “Don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly a place for that sort of directness in war, and the like. Just not in a storyteller. Didn’t anybody ever teach you to stop and smell the roses? If you take the shortest route through a story, you bypass all the good stuff. Suspense, tension, misdirection. It ends up nothing much more than a collection of loosely related facts.” His fingers lace together where his hands are resting across his middle, his thumbs tapping idly.
“Go on, then. Tell me the story. Let’s see if we can’t make it a good one.”
Cassandra huffed (a noise she was accused of making far too often). He truly intended to make her tell a story he not only knew but had LIVED through?
After a long moment
