#absolutionem

[mageunderground]

Starter for @absolutionem

With his still meager (if not nonexistent) income, Anders is willing to eschew most high-ticket items. He has experience enough in find people willing to trade for the goods he personally needs— donations from Lowtown, generous as they were, did not cover all of his clinic and living expenses back in Kirkwall. Even in the thinnest months however, he always scrounged up a bit of food for the stray cats.

Pounce 2, as he has taken to calling her, is a similar weakness of his.

She leaps out of his arms as soon as they're in the pet store, leash swinging back and forth as she prowls over to the treat aisle.

"Has Zevran brought you here already?" Anders mutters, impressed by her single-mindedness. He follows at a more leisurely pace, picking little bits of fur off of his thrifted sweater.

His eyes are already downcast, which makes it easier to spot the creature before he takes even a glance at its owner. Even having been in the tower for half of his life, any Fereldan with eyes could recognize the breed by silhouette alone.

It makes his blurted question somewhat unnecessary.

"Is that a mabari?" Anders asks, before locking eyes with the Knight-Captain. The first templar he's seen since he came to Isola, incidentally. His blood runs cold.

[conjuringink]

"I apologize for asking, but..."

This man's eyes keep wandering over in his direction, and Qifrey is curious about just what he's looking at. Does he look silly? Did a child stick something to his back again? Are there crumbs from lunch left on his cheeks that he somehow missed?

"Do I have something on my face?"

@absolutionem

[castlecrows]

❝ look out! ❞

The knife impacted the telephone pole next to the man's head with a dull thud, sinking several inches deep into the old wood. She had been juggling several of them for a few of the neighborhood kids in Fibonacci. The surprise of someone else showing up on this near-empty side street had distracted her for a second, and she had accidentally loosed one of them—but at least her aim was good enough that she didn't hit him.

The kids all immediately shouted and scrambled in different directions, like a nest of rats that had abruptly had a light shined into it, leaving Anya standing alone and holding several knives.

❝ my bad? ❞ She said, jogging up to retrieve her knife, crow-wing cape trailing behind her in the breeze, ❝ i wasn't trying to kill you, i promise. ❞

@absolutionem

[accipio]

@absolutionem -> ALTERNATIVE ALLEGORY

Nothing wrong with a fresh start. As he slinks down a rain-dark street, past lurid window displays trying to tempt him to part with money that he doesn’t have, Garrett Hawke repeats this platitude to himself in the vain hope that he’ll soon start believing it.

Truth be told, there are some upsides to being lost in an unfamiliar city. No guards who recognize him, no pinch-faced harridans gawking at him in the market square. There goes Malcolm Hawke’s lad. What a shame. Poor Leandra, to think she married into a tainted bloodline…

Yes, he thinks, anonymity does confer certain advantages. Things were getting a bit hot back home, after all. That little mishap with the Calishite horse-trader had drawn undue attention, and the Ilmatari, infernal busybodies that they are, had dispatched one of their paladins to bring Hawke and his fellow brigands to heel.

(You accidentally body-swap one horse-trader with his prize stallion, and suddenly everybody is out to get you. Figures.)

Well, Hawke is certainly not afraid of some hair-shirted zealot with delusions of righteousness, but the fact of the matter is that open conflict is bad for business. His gang’s growing notoriety (due in large part to his own actions) means that their days of picking off lightly-guarded merchant caravans are just about over. In this plane—wherever the hells it happens to be—he’s got no such reputation, but he also has no money, no men, and no clue what he ought to be doing.

He’s distracted, so maybe that’s why he doesn’t notice someone following him until the bastard is nearly breathing down his neck. He can clearly discern the sound of footsteps behind him—some would-be mugger trying to earn their dinner, like as not. Good. Perhaps a bit of action will take his mind off things.

He whirls around on his heel, his rain-sodden hair falling into his eyes. The grin he wears is eager, almost manic. 

“Evening, mate. Something I can do for you?”

[accipio]

✎

handwritten letter meme (currently closed)

Cullen's kitchen looks like the site of a marinara-based explosion. There's a pot of something that might be loosely described as pasta sauce sitting abandoned upon the stove, the process of cooking it evidently having gone wrong in every single way possible. The sole clean patch of countertop is occupied by several containers of takeaway, along with a note. The sound of water running upstairs indicates that the guilty party is presently occupied with scrubbing himself clean of the evidence of his crime.

[accipio]

Flaw — Yapping

"Yapping? What do you think I am, some old lady's purse dog? And here I thought you enjoyed our little conversations."

He huffs and shakes his head, clearly enjoying playing the role of the injured party.

"You wound me, Cullen. If my loquacity is truly so intolerable to you, perhaps you'd better do something about it. You're a templar, aren't you? Surely they taught you how to shut up pesky apostates."

[manifcst]

@absolutionem

"CAN'T YOU UP AND MOVE THIS THING OR SOMETHIN?"

Jedediah's inability to venture outside during the day is restrictive, for the most part. Inconvenient. A curse he would give nearly anything to break. He could come up with additional descriptors if pressed - none of them positive. If he were absolutely forced to scrounge for an upside he supposes there is this: he's gotten to poke around all sorts of buildings since his arrival. Not by choice, but simply because he happened to be in the area when the dawn approached. He's gotten quite good at opening doors ever since Octavius pitched that whole lasso idea of his.

Most of the buildings 'round here are occupied, which is even better. Means he's always got something to nose around in, somebody to pester. This is not the first time he's booked it into this house in particular ( though it is the first time someone inside has been awake at this hour ) and absolutely none of those occasions were deliberate. Last time he'd sworn it was his house. This time he'd been pretty darn sure it was Octavius' place.

He'd forgive ( though not happily ) the other for not immediately noticing him as he moseys his way across the countertop, but he waves his hat to ensure he knows where the conversation is coming from.

"The building, I mean. Downright inconvenient, that's what it is. You know this is the fourth time I've wound up in here?" Honestly, they could at least put the house numbers a little closer to the ground. Make it easier to see, especially for Jed who is only ever heading indoors in a hurry.

[accipio]

👄 + cooking

advice meme

“You know, my father was an excellent cook. I thought he was good at everything, of course, but he really was a dab hand in the kitchen.” Hawke leans against the stove, having thrown some chopped onions into his only clean frying pan and promptly forgotten about them. “He used to say that cooking was like magic: a lot of people have strong opinions on it, there’s often fire involved, and it’s as much an art as it is a science. I am, as we know, a singularly talented mage, so it follows that I should be just as skilled at cooking, which I intend to prove shortly.” 

A glance at the frying pan reveals that Hawke’s onions are less caramelized and more… charred. Cursing, he scrambles to turn off the heat, fearful of what his neighbors will do to him if he sets off the smoke alarm again. “Hm. Actually. Let’s just get takeaway, shall we?”